To the Moon and Back
by Dani-Ellie03
Summary: It took another couple of minutes but eventually the kid dropped his bombshell. "You know, Mom, it's not cloudy out tonight." And in one inward-groan-inducing second, Emma got it. "Let me guess. There's also a meteor shower tonight, right?" An excited grin formed on his lips as he nodded. "So can we go out and watch it?" (or, the Charmings pull an all-nighter)
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** To the Moon and Back  
**Summary: **It took another couple of minutes but eventually the kid dropped his bombshell. "You know, Mom, it's not cloudy out tonight." And in one inward-groan-inducing second, Emma got it. "Let me guess. There's also a meteor shower tonight, right?" An excited grin formed on his lips as he nodded. "So can we go out and watch it?"  
**Spoilers:** None, really. Set mid-season 2.  
**Rating/Warning: **K+, for language, mostly. Family fluff with a side of hurt/comfort, I'm sure, as per usual.  
**Disclaimer:** _Once Upon a Time_ and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC.  
**Author's Note:** The latest in my series of Family Things the Charmings Never Got to Do, So They're Doing Them Now. As always, you don't have to have read the others to read this one. Title comes from the Savage Garden song of the same name, for no real reason other than dude, Savage Garden. Feedback makes my little day! Enjoy. :)

* * *

Emma Swan had never been so happy to plop down on a sofa in her entire life. She even kicked her feet up and rested them on the coffee table, studiously ignoring her mother's disapproving frown from over at the kitchen sink where she and David were finishing up the dinner dishes. If ever a day called for being able to put one's feet on the furniture, it was this one.

It hadn't been a bad day, exactly, just a long one. The morning had been filled with nothing but piles and piles of paperwork and Emma's afternoon was spent dealing with what she'd not-so-affectionately dubbed "curse-break-related craziness." Fairy tale characters had some of the weirdest problems imaginable. Emma should know; she'd spent her entire afternoon attempting to help sort them out.

She leaned her head back against the sofa and let the cushions envelop her tired muscles. She'd just closed her eyes when she heard her son say, "So, Mom, you know what I've never done before?"

_Oh_ boy. That was certainly a loaded question. She almost hesitantly blinked her eyes open and sure enough, Henry was standing beside the couch with a hopeful expression on his little face. "Let me guess," she said, deciding to go for a joke. "You've never seen an elephant walking down Main Street."

Henry chuckled as he plopped down on the sofa next to her. "Well, I've never done that, either, but I was thinking of something else."

Any other day, she would have tossed out another sarcastic guess but she didn't have the energy for it tonight. "All right, I give. What have you never done before?"

"I've never watched a meteor shower."

Of all the things she'd expected to come out of Henry's mouth, that was nowhere on the list. "Really now?"

"Uh huh, and I've always wanted to. I've tried a couple of times but it was too cloudy and I couldn't see a single regular star, never mind any shooting ones."

"Wow. That really su – er ..." She trailed off, catching Snow's wince at her impending use of somewhat strong language. "Stinks," she amended. "That really stinks, Henry." She frowned, finding the wording awkward. Sucks would have flowed better.

The awkward wording apparently didn't bother Henry; he nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it really does." Then he inched closer to her, clearly trying to decide how thick to lay it on. He must have decided to go whole hog because within seconds, he was completely cuddled up to her.

Well, he certainly wanted something, and Emma somehow got the impression that whatever he was working his way up to asking her was going to shatter her plan of sitting on the sofa for a while and then going to bed early.

They just sat together for a moment or two before Henry spoke again. "Have you ever seen a meteor shower?"

"Just once," she said, softening slightly at the memory. "I was really little so I don't remember much about it, just that there were so many shooting stars I couldn't keep track of them all." She'd been about six, if she remembered correctly. It was during one of the hottest nights of summer, and she and one of her foster brothers had snuck outside for an hour or so to watch the shooting stars. That was back when things like shooting stars were still filled with magic and promise.

Henry nodded and once again let the conversation drop. Where on earth was this going? Though a large part of her wanted to tell him to just drop the bombshell she was sure was coming, Emma decided to rein in her impatience and wait him out.

Which was pretty much torture, by the way. Emma's impatience _liked_ roaming free.

It took another couple of minutes but eventually the kid dropped his bombshell. "You know, Mom, it's not cloudy out tonight."

And in one inward-groan-inducing second, Emma got it. "Let me guess. There's also a meteor shower tonight, right?"

An excited grin formed on his lips as he nodded. "So can we go out and watch it?"

A swift glance at her parents told her that they were up for it; they both had encouraging smiles on their faces. Well, there went her nice, relaxing evening. "I suppose we can go out for a little while before bedtime."

Henry's excited grin turned into a nervous little smile, which made Emma's breath catch in her throat. _Uh_ oh. She was clearly not going to be thrilled with whatever he said next. "Okay, but see, here's the thing. Meteor showers around here are the best really early in the morning. Like, three in the morning early."

Emma gaped at her son. Once the kid was asleep, getting him up in the middle of the night typically required either some kind of parade through their shared bedroom or one of his coded missions to accomplish. Setting an alarm for three in the morning was not going to suffice. The only wait Henry was going to be awake at three in the morning was if he never went to sleep in the first place.

Emma's dream of having a nice, relaxing evening and going to bed early burst and drifted away. "You want to pull an all-nighter?"

"No, not an all-nighter," Henry amended quickly. "More like a really-really-late-er."

David attempted to swallow his snicker but Emma still heard it. She shot him an unamused glare, silently telling him not to encourage Henry's sneaky ways. "Henry, I–"

"Oh, Mom, please? It'll be fun! We can make ice cream sundaes and watch movies and play games and stuff like that while we wait, and then we can go out and watch the meteor shower! It's Friday so we can sleep in tomorrow. Please?"

Emma glanced over at her parents for help only to find them both smiling expectantly at her. She didn't like the fact that they didn't seem at all thrown by Henry's request and … oh, wait, hold on a second. Were they _in_ on this? They were, weren't they? Henry must have brought it up to them first, and they must have told him it was okay with them if it was okay with her.

She didn't mind the meteor shower, she really didn't. It was the three in the morning part that was tripping her up. And, to be honest, the idea of doing family activities while staying up until three in the morning was kind of making her nervous, too. She wasn't used to family activities – though she'd been getting better at them since her parents and son had been pretty much foisting them on her – and she had little to no experience with slumber parties.

Just as she was about to tell Henry she wasn't sure that an all-nighter was a good idea, she caught the tiny little pout that was his warmup to the dreaded Puppy Dog Eyes. Sweet mother of God, he was going to kill her with those things someday. Even if she could say no to Stage One and Stage Two, she'd never make it past Stage Three.

Figuring she might as well surrender to it now, she heaved a sigh. "All right, yeah, we can watch the meteor shower."

"Yes!" Henry cried as he threw his arms around her in a hug. "Thank you! This is going to be so much fun, Mom, I promise."

A soft smile curled on her lips as she hugged him back. Even though a slumber party was the last thing she wanted to participate in after the day she'd had, she had to admit that his excitement was the slightest bit contagious. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

Henry pulled out of her embrace after a long moment and then pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going to find some movies for us to watch and maybe some games we can play. I know, I know, no bingo. Then we can figure out what we want to do first."

Then again, maybe it would. Games and movies for the next, what, nine hours, and then a trip outside? Ugh.

He was out of the room and heading for the stairs before Emma could even say a single word. She sighed again, leaning her head back against the sofa. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

She lifted her head when she heard her mother's soft giggle. Her parents had apparently finished the dishes because they were now approaching the sofa, amused grins on their faces. She narrowed her eyes at the both of them. "You two were in on this from the jump, weren't you?"

"Guilty," David admitted while Snow nodded not at all sheepishly.

"He'd been babbling about the meteor shower since he got off the school bus," Snow added. "I'm actually surprised he managed to make it all the way through dinner before asking you."

Well, if her parents had convinced her son to ask her if he could stay up until who knew when, then she wasn't going to be the only one staying up with the kid. "I hope you realize that you're both pulling an all-nighter tonight, too."

The calm expressions on their faces indicated that they had fully expected this turn of events, which Emma didn't think was entirely fair. She'd gotten the rug pulled out from her under tonight; her parents should have, too. "Not all-nighter," David teased. "Really-really-late-er."

Emma shot him an unimpressed glare, which made the both of them swallow snickers. "Oh, sure, laugh it up," she said, arching an eyebrow at them. "We'll see how funny this all is at one-thirty in the morning when we're all exhausted."

"Henry was right," David teased, nudging his wife's shoulder while grinning at his daughter. "This _is_ going to be fun."

Emma just rolled her eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Once again, y'all are awesome. Thanks for the reviews and follows and favorites! Also, the peanut butter sauce recipe below really is Rachael Ray's, but I've never tried it and I find it hard to believe it could be better than Friendly's. I'm just taking a bit of creative license here. ;)

* * *

It took everything Emma had to swallow a groan when out of the corner of her eye, she spotted her son attempting to walk down the stairs with his arms piled high with board games and DVDs. She started to push herself off the couch to help him – the absolute last thing she needed tonight was a trip to the emergency room – but a gentle pat on her knee stopped her in her tracks.

She looked up to find her father smiling at her, a wordless instruction to stay put. He rushed over to help the kid instead, taking most of the games from his arms. While the boys tried to figure out how to get everything down the stairs, Snow sat down on the sofa with her daughter. "And so the fun begins," she said, shooting an indulgent smirk in the general direction of the guys.

"Oh, yeah," Emma replied through a sigh. "An absolute blast."

To her surprise, Snow grasped her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Before Emma could even process the complicated string of emotions that the motherly comfort had brought forth, David and Henry arrived in the living area with the games and movies. As they plopped everything down on the coffee table, Henry breathlessly exclaimed, "No voting yet! We still have to set up."

"Set up for what?" Emma asked him.

Henry just grinned at her, making her swallow another groan. She knew that grin. That was his "I'm going to do something you're going to find really annoying" grin. Then he dashed upstairs, leaving three perplexed adults in his wake.

He returned a minute later dragging both his and Emma's pillows and comforters. This time Emma did groan out loud. "Oh, come on, kid. Seriously? You want to set up the living room like it's a sleepover?"

"Yep," he chuckled, dropping the pillows and blankets on the floors. "Can I go get your and Gramps' stuff, Gramma?"

After a quick glance at Emma, she grinned and nodded at her grandson. "Of course."

Emma groaned again. David and Snow swallowed chuckles.

When Henry returned with blankets and pillows for Snow and David, he finally knelt down next to the coffee table and slid the games and movies closer to him so he could go through the pile box by box. Emma noted with amusement that the kid had conspicuously left Sorry upstairs. Emma was the reigning Sorry champion in their household. In fact, she couldn't remember a time when she'd ever lost a game of Sorry. Although Henry was excited about their activities for the night, that excitement clearly did not extend to having his ass kicked at Sorry.

He did, however, bring down Monopoly, to which Emma wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "No Monopoly."

"But I like Monopoly," Henry replied, his voice verging on a whine.

"You like Monopoly for half an hour," Emma lobbed in return. "That's pretty much everybody's tolerance for Monopoly. A few times around the board, a race to get Boardwalk and Park Place before anyone else, and if you're lucky, you get to build a couple of houses. That's it. Unfortunately, Monopoly has other ideas and never freakin' ends." Which was the truth, by the way. She'd played many a game of Monopoly in her life – because what else was there to do in group homes but play board games – and she didn't think she'd ever actually finished a game. Mostly everyone either got bored or quit out of frustration.

Henry had started to pout at her in an attempt to make her change her mind and allow Monopoly into the evening's roster – which, nope, not going to happen, Puppy Dog Eyes be damned – when sudden mischief flashed into his eyes. "What, is it like the song that never ends? It just goes on and on my friends?"

The bewildered frowns on her parents' faces only deepened when Emma groaned and covered her face with her hands. "I swear to God, kid, if you get that stupid song stuck in my head ..."

Which, of course, was far too much for Henry to resist. This time, he actually sang. "_Some people started playing it not knowing what it was, and they'll continue playing it forever just because it is the game that never ends_–"

"All right, all right, stop!" Emma cried, trying very hard not to chuckle. It wouldn't do to let him know he'd succeeded in amusing her; she had a cranky reputation to uphold. "And just for getting that stupid song stuck in my head, I'm officially vetoing Monopoly."

"Aw, man," Henry huffed, but he set the game aside in a veto pile without another word of complaint.

The rest of the games thankfully went a bit easier. David and Snow both agreed that Chutes and Ladders would be perfect for an easy game later on in the night when they were all tired. Even though Emma had never heard of MindTrap prior to that very moment, she and Snow both vetoed it. "After the day I've had, I don't have the brain power to play this now, never mind at two in the morning," Emma said after reading one of the puzzle cards just to see what the game was like.

"It's also a little old for you, Henry," Snow gently added. Many of the game's puzzles involved solving obviously hypothetical but sometimes graphic murders.

"All right," Henry sighed, dropping it into the veto pile.

"Scattergories is fun," David said when Henry held up the box. Into the playing pile it went.

"How about Operation?" Henry asked.

"Works for me," Emma shrugged. She remembered being decent at it, at least. It joined Chutes and Ladders and Scattergories.

"Mousetrap?" Henry asked, holding up the box.

"You know, I don't think I've ever actually played that game the way it was supposed to be played," Emma said, smirking at the memory. "No matter which group of kids it was, we always just put the mousetrap together and tried to get it to work."

When she caught her parents exchanging a pained look over her head, she winced. Sometimes she forgot that not everyone's childhood involved playing games with an ever-changing group of kids. She nodded at Henry, telling him to add it to the playing pile.

Once they'd worked through the games, it was time to start on the movies. A little smile tugged at the corners of Emma's mouth when she spotted _Mary Poppins_ sitting right on the top of the pile. "I know you like that one," Henry admitted, catching her eye and giving her a smile, "so I figured it was a definite for tonight. And then I found this!" He shuffled through the pile and held one of the cases up to her. "Why didn't you tell me that _Back to the Future_ had a second one?"

"There's a third one, too," Emma said, chuckling when Henry's eyebrows shot up in excitement. "And yes, I have it."

"That sounds like our evening, then," David said, smiling at his family. "_Mary Poppins_ and the two _Back to the Future_s, unless anyone has any complaints."

No one complained.

"Great!" Henry exclaiming, grinning for all his eleven-year-old self was worth. He hefted the veto pile back into his arms to put away upstairs. "Games and movies and snacks, here we come!"

* * *

First and foremost on Snow's list of things to do was making the living room as tidy as possible so they could set up their "sleeping bags" for the evening. She pushed the coffee table to the side of the room, leaving the floor in front of the sofa open. Emma claimed a corner of the couch, setting her pillow against the arm and leaving her blanket rumpled on the cushion. Snow and Charming exchanged an amused glance, then Charming nodded towards the other end of the sofa, silently telling Snow to take it. She smiled gratefully at him and placed her pillow and blanket opposite her daughter's.

David and Henry got their stuff set up on the living room floor, Henry closest to the sofa. "Great, so when I get up in the morning, I can step right on you," Emma said, teasingly nudging her son's shoulder with her foot.

Henry grinned sheepishly at the thought of waking up to his half-asleep mother tripping over him and shifted his comforter and pillow a foot or so further away from the couch.

Once everyone's "sleeping" spaces were set up, Snow smiled at her family. "What snack should we have with the first movie?"

"Ice cream sundaes!" Henry exclaimed as if that were the most obvious answer in the world.

Snow hesitated but upon spying the tiny excited sparkle in her daughter's eyes, she decided to allow it. Though there was no way on God's green earth Emma would admit it, she was clearly looking forward to the ice cream, and Snow figured that getting the ridiculously sugary snack out of the way first was probably best anyway. "All right, let's raid the cabinets."

Emma and Henry raised mischievous eyebrows at each other and took off for the kitchen, leaving a very amused Snow and Charming to follow behind them. Snow had known that Emma would calm down a bit once they got into the swing of things. She wouldn't lose her edge or sarcasm, of course, but she'd relax enough to enjoy the activity while still making it look to all outward appearances like she wasn't.

Henry headed for the freezer to pull out every single carton of ice cream they had and set on the counter. Snow opened the pantry to take stock of her food stores. Rainbow sprinkles and chocolate jimmies had been a pantry staple of hers even as Mary Margaret Blanchard so they had plenty of those. She had no cherries but she didn't think that would bother anyone too much. And in what was probably the miracle of the ages, she found an unopened jar of microwavable hot fudge hidden behind a box of saltines and some jars of pasta sauce.

Why neither of the sugar addicts in the apartment had found it already was beyond her, but she was thanking her lucky stars that they hadn't.

Snow brought everything over to the counter to join the cartons of ice cream. Charming grabbed spoons and bowls while Henry snagged the can of whipped cream from the fridge and the ice cream scoop from the utensil drawer. And Emma … well, she was busy spooning peanut butter into a bowl.

"What on earth are you doing?" Snow asked when Emma stuck the peanut-butter-filled bowl in the microwave.

"I'm making peanut butter sauce," she said, the look on her face practically screaming 'What does it look like I'm doing?' "I want chocolate ice cream with hot fudge and peanut butter sauce."

"Ooh!" Henry exclaimed, his eyes lighting up at his mother's plan. "I want to try that! It'll be like a peanut butter cup."

"Yeah, that's the idea."

"I'm not sure peanut butter sauce is just warm peanut butter, though," Snow frowned.

"I saw Rachael Ray do it once," Emma shrugged, sticking the bowl in the microwave. When all three of them fixed her with bewildered frowns, she huffed and rolled her eyes. "Holy crap, you guys. She had a cooking show. I used to leave my TV on for background noise, all right?"

"And all she did was heat up peanut butter?" Charming asked.

"I think so." The microwave dinged, and Emma opened the door with gusto. The excited smile on her face instantly turned into a frown. "Okay, maybe she did something else to it. This doesn't look right."

Snow peeked over her daughter's shoulder and swallowed a chuckle. All Emma had succeeded in making was melted peanut butter. "It's fine. We just need to add something to it so it's sweeter and a little more pourable."

After taking a moment to think, Snow crossed the kitchen and pulled both the honey from the cabinet and the milk from the fridge. She stepped back over to Emma and slid the bowl out of her daughter's hand.

Her eyes wide, Emma watched as her mother stirred the milk and honey into the sauce, then put the bowl back into the microwave for another few seconds. This time when she gave it a stir, a pourable peanut butter sauce finally came together. "How in the hell did you know how to do that?" Emma asked, her voice somewhat breathless with wonder.

"It was a guess," Snow admitted. "Because of that, you might want to give it a taste test before putting it on your ice cream."

Emma dipped the tip of her spoon into the bowl to take a quick taste. It must have been good because her eyes closed involuntarily and a little smile curled on her lips. "That," she said, opening her eyes and pointing down at the bowl, "is better than Friendly's."

Snow and Emma smiled at each other for a moment before Henry asked, "What's Friendly's?"

And just like that, the tender moment was broken. Emma heaved a sigh, shaking her head at her poor, sheltered son. "Oh, kid, you are so deprived. Friendly's is ice cream. Well, it's a restaurant, but really, the only reason you go there is to get ice cream for dessert. They make the best old-fashioned sundaes, and they have a peanut butter sauce that is to die for."

"Though it's not as good as Gramma's," Henry pointed out to her.

A gentle smile pulled at Emma's mouth as she looked up at her mother. "Right."

Snow smiled back and just barely resisted the urge to brush her thumb along her baby girl's cheek. Emma had been getting better with allowing little touches and grasps of the hand, but a gesture like that in front of the boys would probably have been a bit much for her.

"Sundae assembly line is finally all set," Charming said, capturing the attention of his family. While they'd been discussing peanut butter sauce and ice cream shops, he'd been setting up a little sundae station of their own. All three half-gallons from their freezer – chocolate, vanilla bean, and chocolate fudge brownie (Emma's choice, of course) – sat next to the bowls and spoons. On the other side of the ice cream lay the bottles of sprinkles, a bottle of chocolate sauce, the jar of hot fudge, and small bowls containing what was left of their open bags of M&Ms and chocolate chips. The can of whipped cream sat at the end, ready to be the perfect finishing touch for all four sundaes.

"This?" Henry breathed. "Is awesome!"

Even Emma hid a grin as she set her bowl of peanut butter sauce down and snatched the jar of hot fudge to warm in the microwave.

Snow must have gotten wrapped up in the moment as well because before she could stop herself, she turned to the cabinet to find one more thing. She really shouldn't have been allowing this much sugar after dinner but … well, Emma was allowing this whole evening of activity for Henry, and she wanted to allow Emma something in return. Her fingers grazed what she'd been searching for and she smiled to herself as she pulled the item from the shelf.

Just as Emma and Henry turned away from the counter with their finished chocolate peanut butter sundaes, Snow stuck a full-size peanut butter cup into each of their bowls. "This ice cream just got even more awesome!" Henry exclaimed through a grin. "Thanks, Gramma!" Then he was off like a shot, plopping down in the living room on his makeshift sleeping bag and digging in.

Emma, on the other hand, just gaped at her. "You're actively encouraging our sugar high?"

"Just for tonight," Snow teased. "Something's got to keep the two of you going until three in the morning. Tomorrow I'll go back to bemoaning your sugar-filled eating habits."

"Uh huh," Emma replied, clearly wondering what the catch was.

The fact that Emma could never take someone doing something nice for her at face value made Snow's heart clench in her chest. Her poor sweet baby girl, always used to being used, always used to people only being nice to her when they wanted something. "It's a thank you, Emma," Snow assured her around the scratching in her throat. "Charming told me how much running around you did this afternoon. I know this is probably the last thing you wanted to do tonight and you didn't have to agree to it, but you did. I know you did it for Henry, but thank you."

At that, the tension on Emma's face softened. "It's not a big deal."

It was a big deal, though, and all three of the adults knew it. These activities, these evenings of just sitting around and being together … they weren't easy for Emma because they were so foreign to her. They weren't easy for Charming or Snow because the activities they were sharing with their daughter now only made them even more keenly aware of all the activities they'd missed.

But these activities were a step to healing, a step to getting to know one another and learning how to interact with one another, and regardless of how hard they were, they all needed them.

"Guys!" Henry called from the living room, startling all three adults back to the present. "I'm starting _Mary Poppins_ without you."

"Well, now," Charming said, winking at his wife and daughter as he put the finishing touches on his own sundae, "we can't have that! Bert as the one-man band is my favorite part!"

Henry giggled. "My favorite part is the tea party on the ceiling. It looks like fun!"

"You would think so," Emma teased, rolling her eyes. This time, though, Snow spotted her daughter's tiny, indulgent smile just before Emma wiped it off her face.


	3. Chapter 3

While her parents put the finishing touches on their sundaes, Emma carried her own ice cream back to the living room. She eased down on the middle cushion of the sofa, smiling to herself when Henry shifted backwards so that he was sitting at her feet. He had started the movie like he'd said but the opening credits were still running up the screen. That said, if David didn't hurry, he was indeed going to miss Bert being the one-man band.

She needn't have worried. Just before the credits finished, Snow and David exited the kitchen with their own sundaes in hand. Her breath caught in her throat when David plopped down on her left side and Snow eased down on her right. The blankets and pillows on either end of the sofa were fighting her parents for space, but neither of them were uncomfortable enough to move them. In fact, they both seemed to be using them as an excuse to sit that much closer to her.

Emma let out a soft sigh. That was what she got for sitting on the middle cushion, she supposed.

And yet, there was a tiny part of her that wanted nothing more than to snuggle into both their sides, like a little girl cuddling up with her parents after a rough day at school.

She managed to silence that tiny part of her because holy crap, she was not ten years old. Excitement over her peanut butter cup sundae and nostalgia-induced happiness over the movie currently on the TV notwithstanding, of course.

A couple minutes later, Henry set his empty bowl on the floor. "How was your sundae?" she asked, nudging his back with her toes.

"Really good," he replied without turning away from the television. "The peanut butter sauce was the best thing ever."

At that, Snow heaved a sigh. "I've created a monster, haven't I?"

"I think you have, Gramma." Then his admittedly divided attention was gone, recaptured by the magical world of _Mary Poppins_.

Emma hid a smirk when she picked up on his amused tone. There was a bit of truth in his statement, of course, but he was also playing up his newfound attachment to peanut butter sauce in an effort to tease his grandmother.

As Emma swallowed another bite of her own sundae, she wondered if her mother hadn't created two monsters with this peanut butter sauce thing. It was going to be hard enough to get Henry not to ask for it on every bowl of ice cream any of them scooped from now on. Now that Emma knew making it involved all of three ingredients that were pantry staples and thirty seconds in the microwave, there was nothing stopping her from adding it to every bowl of ice cream any of them scooped from now on.

She finished her ice cream far too quickly, in her opinion. Sighing softly, she started to stand so she could take her empty bowl and Henry's to the sink. The only problem was that with her parents squeezed in on either side of her and Henry at her feet, she couldn't get up.

Before she could nudge Henry and tell him to move for a second, Snow took the bowl from her hand with a soft smile and stood up to take them to the kitchen herself. She gathered everyone else's empty bowls and brought them to the sink, leaving Emma staring after her.

It was still so hard for her to reconcile how she grew up with how she should have grown up. Nights like this … they should have been normal. She should have had countless evenings cuddled up on the sofa with her parents while watching movies … or whatever the Enchanted Forest equivalent of cuddling up and watching a movie was, she supposed. Cuddling up and reading books? Or telling stories? She could almost see it in her mind's eye … herself as a little princess in a big giant bed with a canopy, her mother on one side and her father on the other, one or both of them weaving a tale of adventure for her. Closing her eyes and listening to the story, letting their words form images in her head, images far beyond anything Hollywood could ever simulate.

Instead she'd gotten nothing. She'd gotten a little bed in houses where no one cared. No one told her stories to relax her or soothe her to sleep. No, she'd cried herself to sleep every night, dreaming of finding parents to cuddle up with but knowing she'd never find them.

Togetherness like this … it shouldn't have made her as uncomfortable as it did. It should have been easy, should have been _natural_, but it wasn't. It was foreign and alien, and the fact that it was so unnatural to her made her so _sad _and so_ angry_. The sheer love shining in her parents' eyes whenever they looked at her shouldn't have sent a stab of fear through her heart, but it did. She was afraid to let them in completely, afraid to let herself relax because she didn't think she could bear it if she let them in and that love went away.

It had every single other time.

_They're different_, she had to keep reminding herself. _They're different and they're not going anywhere_. But no matter how much she tried to convince herself of that fact, there was still that little bit of irrational fear that they were just like everyone else and they were going to leave her, too.

And it shouldn't have been like this. She should have had so much and she didn't and it struck her as ridiculously _unfair_.

Emma must have been getting more visibly upset than she realized because her father reached over and grasped her hand. She drew in a surprised breath and turned her head, looking over at him. He hadn't turned away from the TV but when he felt his eyes on her, he met her gaze with a calm smile and squeezed her hand. Then, sensing that any further comfort would push her from touched to uncomfortable, he let her hand go and turned his attention back to the movie.

She swallowed hard, half in shock. How the hell did he know just the right thing to do? The silent support was exactly what she'd needed. Almost unconsciously, she shifted a little closer to him, accepting the comfort he desperately wanted to offer.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him smile. Snow returned then, squeezing back in on the right side of the sofa. "Is everything all right?" she asked, catching sight of her daughter's glistening eyes.

"Yeah," Emma replied, giving her mother a smile. _It is now_, she added silently.

For a while, everything was quiet save for the television and Henry softly humming along with the background music. Emma smiled down at him, wondering how many times he'd seen this movie. Hell, it was all she could do not to hum along with the music herself. She hadn't seen _Mary Poppins_ in years but it had been one of her favorites growing up. One of her group homes had owned a VHS copy that she pretty much wore out. There were parts of it she could still recite! In her head, of course; she wouldn't be caught dead reciting it out loud now.

On the television, Bert was pretending to walk a tightrope, much to Jane's and Michael's amusement. A little smile curled on Emma's lips despite herself. "You know, when I was little, I used to like to pretend I was related to him."

When her parents both turned surprised gazes on her, Emma realized she'd said that out loud. Aw, _crap_.

Henry frowned up at her. "You used to pretend you were related to Bert?"

"No. Well, yes, but no. Not Bert, Dick Van Dyke."

"Why?"

She shrugged uncomfortably. "As far as I knew, it could have been true. He was always so funny any time I saw him in anything. I mean, look at Michael's face there. That little kid is genuinely amused. It just looked like he was good with kids." She squirmed on the sofa; the more she talked, the more ridiculous it sounded. "I don't know. It was just something I liked to pretend was true."

David and Snow exchanged a pained glance, making her wince. They'd read enough between the lines to figure out what Henry had missed: the reason Emma had wanted to be related to someone who was good with kids was because the people she lived with were not at all good with kids. "It was just a little kid wish," she mumbled, shrugging again. "Forget it; it was crazy."

"Certainly no crazier than being related to Snow White and Prince Charming," David replied softly, giving her a smile that was equal parts sardonic and comforting.

Emma returned the smile. No, it certainly wasn't.

All four of them returned their attention to the movie, watching Bert attempt – very badly – to perform the magic needed to jump into the chalk picture. "I don't know, Mom," Henry said as Mary Poppins stepped in to show Bert how it was done. "Being related to Dick Van Dyke would be cool, but it seems to me like being related to Snow White and Prince Charming is _much_ cooler."

Emma glanced at her parents, who of course were now looking at her with those loving expressions that made her heart skip a beat. "Yeah, kid," she murmured, smiling softly. "I guess it is."


	4. Chapter 4

As the Banks family headed to the park to go fly a kite, Henry heaved a satisfied sigh. Snow smiled down at her grandson before casting a surreptitious glance to her side. Her smile grew wider. Charming was halfway to dozing and Emma didn't look like she was far behind him.

As adorable as the scene beside her was, she knew Henry would have a conniption if he caught them. After all, they still had a good six and a half hours to go before the meteor shower. They couldn't lose two members of the family already! Since Snow knew she could bring them around far more gently than Henry would, she reached over and gently tapped the back of Emma's hand.

She'd expected the touch to capture her daughter's attention but to her surprise, Emma shifted closer to her instead. She hadn't taken her eyes off the TV and seemed wholly unaware that she'd even moved. Snow's breath caught in her throat; an Emma snuggle, unconscious though it clearly was, was something of a rarity. All thoughts of gently nudging her family into awareness flew from her mind, and for one long, blissful moment, Snow delighted in just being with her daughter.

As was typical in her endearingly loud – and, don't get her wrong, absolutely wonderful – family, that moment was soon shattered.

"Whoa, wait a second!" Henry exclaimed, startling both Emma and Charming back to attentiveness. They both sat at attention, blinking hard as their groggy brains struggled to catch up. Snow managed to turn her amused snicker into a little cough.

The ending credits had just finished scrolling up the screen, and they had apparently given the boy quite the surprise. "Dick Van Dyke was the old guy in the bank, too?!"

Emma chuckled, nudging her son's back with her toe. "You never knew that?"

"No, and do you know how many times I've seen this?!"

"Now do you see why I wanted to be related to him when I was a kid? The guy's kind of amazing."

Henry smiled at her, allowing her point.

Snow cleared her throat, commanding her family's attention. Another movie, clearly, was far too tame for their energy level at the moment, so she'd decided it was time for a game. "Next on our Meteor Shower All-Nighter Agenda is game time. Who wants to pick one?"

"I still want to throw in a vote for Monopoly," Henry smirked, casting a cheeky glance in his mother's direction.

"No Monopoly," Emma replied, seemingly on base instinct. "Operation works for me, though."

"Sounds good to me, too," Charming added, smiling at his daughter. She smiled back, grateful for the backup.

Henry grinned and grabbed the game from the pile. Emma shifted off the sofa to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her son. Snow almost immediately registered the loss of warmth from where her daughter had been practically snuggled up against her. She exchanged a pained glance with Charming, whom she could tell missed the warmth as well.

As Henry set the little plastic pieces into Cavity Sam, Emma turned to her parents, a curious frown knotting her brow. "Did you guys have games in the Enchanted Forest?"

Snow and Charming exchanged another glance, this one brief but very surprised. Questions from their daughter about their life in the Forest came few and far between. She didn't like thinking about it, they'd both figured, because thinking about their life in the Forest inevitably led to thinking about how her life should have been. And it was so different, so vastly different from what Emma had experienced that most of the time, she just couldn't deal with it.

"I had a couple of board games," Charming replied softly. "Checkers, definitely, and I remember my father teaching me chess. We had a deck of playing cards, too, and of course if I didn't want to play with anything we had on hand, I made up games. The animals were fun to play with, in all honesty. Did you know you could get sheep to race?"

"Really?" Henry breathed, his eyes wide.

"The young ones, anyway," Charming confirmed. "Sometimes I'd play with them while I was supposed to be herding them."

From the wide-eyed expression on her daughter's face and the dreamy expression on her grandson's, Snow gathered they were both trying to picture a young Charming racing lambs while the older sheep followed after him.

"How about you, Gramma?" Henry asked after letting his grandfather's story settle. "Did you have games in the castle?"

"Absolutely," Snow replied, smiling down at him. "My father used to play a game of parcheesi with me every night before I went to bed. I also had a game that was sort of like mancala but the rules were a little different."

"What's mancala?" Henry asked.

"Wait, I think I know," Emma broke in before Snow could say a word. "That's the one with the eight cups and the glass beads, right?" When Snow nodded at her, she gave a little smile. "One of the girls in the group home liked that game but we didn't have a set. She made one out of an egg carton, two Dixie cups, and some marbles."

The confused frown had not budged from Henry's face. "I still don't know what it is."

Emma briefly shut her eyes as she tried to remember the rules of the game. "The way we always played was you have a playing area with two rows of six cups – which is why the egg carton worked – and two bigger cups, one at either end. At the start of the game, each of the smaller cups had four marbles in it. You picked all the marbles out of one cup and dropped them one by one into the other cups going clockwise around the board. You'd put a marble into your home cup but not the other person's. If your last marble ended up in an empty cup, you could take all the marbles in the cup opposite it. The object of the game was to have the most marbles in your home cup at the end."

The boy raised his eyebrows. "Sounds … interesting."

"I'm probably not describing it right," Emma sighed, "but the point is, I know that game."

Snow smiled at her daughter and nodded, telling her she was in fact describing it correctly. Emma smiled back. "I had games during lessons, too," Snow added. "Games and toys were frequently used as teaching opportunities."

"Like you used to do with us?" Henry asked, referring to when Mary Margaret Blanchard would lead her students in a classroom game that was more teaching exercise than strict gameplay.

"Sort of, yes. My mother taught me how to braid hair with one of my dolls, for instance. And one of my favorite exercises with Miss Samantha was a communication exercise involving wooden building blocks."

"What the hell do wooden building blocks have to do with communication?" Emma asked. Her full attention was on her mother now, making Snow's heart warm in her chest.

Charming shifted on the sofa, moving closer to his wife, then ran his hand over her back out of the view of the "kids." Snow hid a smile as she explained Miss Samantha's game. "We each had an identical set of wooden blocks. We sat facing each other but she would put something up between us so we couldn't see what the other was doing. Then one of us would build a structure while describing it. The other person was not allowed to ask questions; they just followed the directions. The object was for both of us to build the same structure but it never worked."

A fond smile had curled on Snow's lips at the memory. Emma, however, looked utterly confused. "If you were telling each other how to build the thing, how come it didn't work?"

"Because describing what you're doing as you're doing it is a lot harder than it sounds. That was the whole point of the exercise." Emma looked dubious, making Snow hide a smirk. "For instance, the phrase 'next to' can mean many, many things. It can mean 'right up against' or 'two inches to the right of' or 'six inches to the left of.' If all I told her was that I put my square block next to my rectangle block, she wouldn't have any idea _where_ exactly 'next to' was. It would just snowball from there. Each piece would be placed even more out of sync and the end result was always two completely different structures."

Emma stared at her for a long moment and then deadpanned, "So it was kind of like Telephone."

"Kind of," Snow allowed through a chuckle. "Just with blocks instead of words."

"I want to try that!" Henry breathed, making all three adults chuckle.

"Yeah, because we have so many wooden building blocks just lying around," Emma said, rolling her eyes.

Snow's eyed widened. No, they didn't have wooden building blocks anywhere in the apartment but she did have something they could use to at least illustrate the point. "Hold that thought, I'll be right back," she said as she pushed herself to her feet. Then she headed for the loft, leaving three bewildered family members in her wake.

All she had to do was find where Henry had left the vetoed board games. As soon as she reached the top of the stairs, she noted to her amusement that in typical excited little boy fashion, he'd just dropped them all on his bed to put away later. Smirking, she dug out Mind Trap, opened it up, and snatched the plastic bag containing the sets of tangrams needed to complete some of the game's puzzles.

When Snow arrived back downstairs, she smiled at her perplexed family and handed Henry the bag. "Henry, please take the blue pieces," she said as she picked up the lid to Operation. She shifted Cavity Sam out of the way and set the lid upright between her daughter and grandson. "Emma, please take the teal pieces."

There was that utterly dubious expression on Emma's face again. Still, she did as she was instructed without argument, pulling the teal tangrams from the bag and setting them in a small pile in front of her.

Snow spared a glance at Charming, who was gazing at her through amused eyes. She winked at him and turned back to her daughter and grandson. "Can you see Henry's pieces, Emma?"

"No."

"Okay, good. Now, Henry, start making a design with your pieces while telling Emma what you're doing. Remember, the object is for both of you to make the same design." And with that, Snow sat back down on the sofa to watch.

Henry stared down at his pieces for a moment and then smiled. "Okay, put one of the big triangles to the left of the square ..."

Snow and Charming watched with barely contained amusement as Emma and Henry proceeded to make completely different designs. When Henry placed his last piece, he waited for confirmation from Emma that she was done as well and then whipped the lid out of place so he could see how they'd done.

The excited smile dropped off his face in a fraction of a second and was replaced with a look of unpleasant surprise. "Hey! It's not close at all!"

Emma, too, looked from her tangrams to Henry's and back again as if she couldn't figure out what she'd done wrong. "But I did everything you said!"

Charming swallowed a snicker. "It wasn't anything you did, Emma, and it wasn't Henry, either. That's what the exercise was designed to illustrate, correct?"

Snow nodded. "It was an exercise in learning to use descriptors properly and concisely."

"But I did!" the boy cried.

"Clearly not," Emma mumbled, her eyes still darting from her son's tangram design to hers.

"But I said 'to the left of' and everything!"

Snow smiled gently at him. "You did, but that's not all it is. You told her to put the triangle to the left of the square but you never told her which side of your triangle was touching your square." Henry had placed his triangle with one of the legs against the square; Emma had placed her hypotenuse against the square, creating a simplistic sideways house. "Just from that one little difference, the placement of all her other pieces were completely off from yours. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just one of those things that sounds a lot easier than it really is."

Henry frowned down at the two designs, completely unconvinced. After a moment, he put the lid back up between him and Emma. "I want to try again."

And so they did. Henry added a bit more description this time around but the results were the same: two wildly different tangram designs. At least this time, Henry found it funny. "Okay, Mom, it's your turn now."

Charming and Snow watched as Emma had no more luck in describing her design than Henry did. Henry giggled while Emma frowned down at the plastic pieces as if she couldn't figure out how the two designs had happened. "Ugh, this_ is_ hard."

Then, hiding a smirk, she turned to her parents. "Do you have any more of these plastic things? 'Cause you two should totally get in on this. We can't even get one other person to make our design. Can you imagine trying to get _three_ people to make the same design? It'll be hilarious."

Snow and Charming exchanged a touched glance. Their baby girl actually wanted them to play a game with her! Mind Trap only had the two sets of tangrams, but if Snow remembered correctly, Mary Margaret Blanchard had bought a few sets for her classroom at one point over the last twenty-eight years. "I think that can be arranged," she said softly as she once again pushed herself off the couch.

If Emma wanted her and Charming to play Build the Tangrams with her, then they were going to play Build the Tangrams with her. Snow would gladly empty out her entire closet if she had to; she was not about to let this opportunity pass her by.

Emma smiled at her, and Snow was off to her room to search for the extra sets of tangrams.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I snagged the wooden building block exercise Snow described from an exhibit many moons ago at the Museum of Science in Boston (which is, completely seriously now, my favorite place in the whole city). It's one of those things that's easy enough to replicate at home, and it actually is a lot harder than it sounds! Also: thank you all for the reviews and follows and favorites. Y'all rock. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** Shoutout to BelovedMaeve ... you shall see why. I thought the idea was so adorable, I wrote it in. ;) Also, it was apparently daddy/daughter time, because Daddy Charming makes everything better. :)

* * *

Much to Charming's and Snow's surprise, the tangram exercise occupied their family for a good couple of hours. Emma had been correct; the added challenge of trying to describe their designs to three other people was indeed hilarious. At first both she and Henry did try to make their descriptions clearer than their previous ones, in the spirit of the original exercise. The longer the game went on, however, the more amusement they both got out of the wildly different tangram designs.

Their descriptions, then, consistently got worse. Emma was at least visibly getting tired. Henry was just growing lazy with his descriptions because he thought it was funny.

It was now Emma's turn but she didn't look like she had the energy to lead another round. "How about I take a turn leading?" Charming asked, giving his daughter a little smile.

She shot him a grateful smile in return. "Works for me."

He patted her knee before shifting away from his spot next to her on the floor. He took Henry's spot in front of the family and Henry slipped into his place beside Emma.

Charming felt a twinge in his heart even at that small movement from his daughter's side. He and Snow had flanked her as soon as they started playing, just like when they'd sat down on either side of her on the couch during _Mary Poppins_. After missing the first twenty-eight years of her life, they both just wanted to be near her as much as they could.

This evening had been great so far, in terms of being able to be near her. They'd had two full hours during the movie and then most of the last couple of hours during the game. Still, he felt himself craving more time with his baby girl.

When he met his wife's eyes, she gave him an understanding smile. He smiled back, allowing his wife's strength to boost his, and focused his attention on making a design with his tangrams.

He soon discovered that his daughter and grandson had been right all along: coming up with proper descriptions was indeed difficult. When he removed the Operation lid from between him and his family, Emma ducked her head to hide an amused smile.

Snow's design was close to his but neither Emma's nor Henry's matched at all. Snow tried to swallow a snicker but she didn't swallow it quite fast enough. Charming turned a teasing look on her. "I suppose you think you could do better?"

She glanced over at Emma, who was trying very hard to not show how completely amused she was. When she looked back at Charming, he gave her a surreptitious wink. A look of comprehension settled on Snow's face, and in that instant, Charming knew she understood: even though she was trying to hide it, Emma was getting a kick out of their teasing each other. And in that case, they simply had to continue it.

"I'm sure I could," Snow allowed, smiling proudly at her husband.

Emma raised her eyebrows at her parents' challenge while Henry watched everything through amused eyes.

"We'll just see about that," Charming said, pushing himself to his feet. He vacated his spot, turning it over to his wife. He claimed Snow's vacated spot next to Emma, smiling to himself when she – unconsciously, he assumed – shifted closer to him.

From the very first word Snow spoke, Charming knew this round was going to be different. Snow's instructions were at the same time detailed and concise. Charming could envision her design solely from her words.

When she pulled the cardboard lid away, she could barely hide her amusement at the utter shock on Henry's and Emma's faces. Charming had made the exact same design. Only one of Emma's triangles was off from Snow's; she'd placed it at the wrong angle. Henry had three pieces out of alignment but even his was close enough that Snow's design could be seen in his.

Hiding an amused grin of his own, Charming once again winked at his wife, making her swallow a snicker.

Emma continued to gape at her until she finally blinked, her shock fading enough that she could speak. "How in the hell did you _do_ that?"

Henry snickered. "Of the three of us, Gramma's had the most practice, Mom. It's her game, remember?"

"Yeah, and she also said that she and Miss Samantha never made it work," she argued, flicking her gaze to her son before refocusing on her mother. "I mean, I know you and David know each other so well that you're pretty much telepathic, which is ridiculously weird but whatever, so I can buy him getting it. But me and Henry? Well, for the most part. What did you do that we didn't?"

"That would be telling," Snow replied through a sly smile, much to Henry's amusement and Emma's exasperation.

Huffing softly, Emma pushed herself to her feet. "You know what? Nothing is going to beat that game. We should just put it away now." She stretched the muscles that were now aching from sitting on the floor for two hours and, to the bewilderment of her entire family, headed for the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" Henry asked her.

"Looking for a snack. I'm hungry."

At the mention of food, an excited Henry stood as well and followed his mother to the kitchen. "Me, too!"

"You're always hungry."

"So?"

Emma just sighed.

An amused Charming shared a smirk with an equally amused Snow. Emma was always hungry, too, but far be it for her to admit it. After a moment, they both decided to join their daughter and grandson in the kitchen. Charming stood first and held his hand out to his wife to help her to her feet. She complied with a smile, grasping his hand and pulling as she stood.

When they arrived in the kitchen, Henry had taken a seat at the center island, eagerly awaiting whatever snack his mother chose. Emma was standing in front of the open cabinet, her eyes darting from the open bag of sour cream and onion chips to the unopened box of mint Oreos. An amused Snow winked at her husband before stepping up beside her daughter. "You do know that the contents of cabinet aren't going to chance the longer you look at them, correct?"

"I know," Emma sighed. "I just don't know if I want salty or sweet."

Charming could tell it was killing Snow not to suggest some kind of healthy snack in place of the chips and cookies. Both Emma and Henry had informed them earlier that sleepovers required junk food, which meant Snow was going to have to stifle her desire to force nutrition on her family, at least for the evening.

As Charming ran his eyes over the contents of the cabinet, he found the solution for Emma's problem. He stepped up behind her, reached over her shoulder, and pulled the bottle of popping corn down from the middle shelf. "Who says you can't have both?" he asked, shaking the bottle and making the kernels rattle.

Henry frowned. "Popcorn's salty but it's not sweet."

"It is if you make kettle corn," he informed his grandson.

Emma turned to her father, her jaw dropping open in surprise even as excitement sparkled in her eyes. "You know how to make kettle corn and this is the first time you're mentioning it? That is not at all okay! I demand you make us the biggest batch of kettle corn you can right this very second."

Snow and Henry swallowed chuckles at Emma's outburst. Charming, on the other hand, grinned mischievously. He gave a teasing reverent nod in her direction. "The princess shall have what she desires."

A sheepish flush colored Emma's fair cheeks but she covered it with a huff.

Snickering, Henry ran back to the living room. "Where do you think you're going?" Emma called after him.

"If Gramps is making popcorn, that means it's movie time," Henry called back, the "duh" implied in his tone. "I'm putting in the second _Back to the Future_ movie and setting the sleeping bags back up."

The three adults shared a glance, trying to determine amongst themselves if stopping the games for the movie worked for them. Emma shrugged, indicating it was fine with her. Snow and Charming both smiled at her. They were both pretty much just going with the flow anyway; if movie time was fine with Emma and Henry, they were all for it, too.

While Henry readied the living room for their second movie of the evening, Charming, Snow, and Emma worked to put their late night snack together. Or, to be more precise, Snow and Charming worked to get their late night snack together. Emma stood beside the stove, watching Charming pull together the ingredients with barely concealed fascination.

She didn't move, not even when he set the pot on the burner. She just stood and watched as he poured the oil into the pot and plinked three test kernels into the oil. He caught Snow's eye as she gathered bowls and poured glasses of water, and she nodded encouragingly at him. Emma wasn't consciously reaching out to him but she was reaching out, and Charming wanted more than anything to respond to her.

He was still learning how to feel her out, how to know which response was best when. What would prompt her to open up one day would make her clam up the next. Tonight, he was banking on gentle teasing, so, after a long moment of just enjoying his daughter being so close to him, he said, "I didn't realize popcorn was so fascinating."

His voice must have given her a slight startle because she shot her head up to meet his eyes. "Popcorn itself isn't fascinating but kettle corn is," she said, giving a halfhearted shrug. "I've only tried to make it twice but I burned it both times."

Charming gave her a soft smile. "You either put the sugar in too early or didn't get the popcorn out of the pot fast enough if you burned it. Sugar burns easily."

"I guess it does," Emma murmured, staring down at the pot.

Again, Charming spared a glance at Snow. She once again nodded at him, silently encouraging him to do what she could tell he wanted to do. "_She's amenable_," that nod said to him. "_Go for it_," that nod said to him.

And so he went for it. He looked up at his daughter, smiling gently. "You want to try again?"

She scoffed, and the sound broke Charming's heart. Not because she was dismissing his offer but because even without words, he could tell that she didn't believe in herself enough to try it again. "I'm oh-for-two in the kettle corn department," she said, confirming his theory. "Why should I try again?"

His voice was soft as he said, "Because this time, you have a teacher."

That got her to meet his gaze, a flurry of emotion in her eyes even as her face remained passive. She was simultaneously surprised and touched by his offer and just a little afraid of disappointing him. Still, she couldn't stop the little smile that curled on her lips as she took the leap of faith. "Okay."

Charming's heart soared in his chest as he shifted away from the pot, allowing Emma to step into his place. "Kettle corn starts just like any other batch of popcorn: a coating of oil in the bottom of the pan and a couple of kernels that will let you know when the oil's hot enough for the rest."

Snow kept her distance, busying herself with her tasks while watching her husband and daughter out of the corner of her eye. As Charming talked Emma through making a proper batch of kettle corn, he looked over his shoulder only once, meeting his wife's gentle gaze. When she smiled at him, he smiled back.

The test kernels popped, signaling them all that it was time for the lesson in earnest. Charming poured the rest of the kernels into the pot and let Emma take over. She was a bit nervous at first but she soon relaxed and just listened to her father's coaching. She poured the sugar in when Charming told her, right before the kernels started to pop. "All right, now's the tricky part," he said when the kernels began to pop fast and furious. "You've got to keep it moving or you risk burning the sugar."

Smiling, she gave the pot a shake every few seconds, keeping the kernels moving just like her father told her.

Once the popping slowed, Charming told her to take the pot off the burner. "You've got to get the popcorn out of the pot quickly, though, or it's going to burn."

As soon as she pulled the pot off the burner, she dumped the popped corn into the plastic bowl Snow had ready and waiting. She added the salt, tossed the popcorn in the bowl to coat all the kernels with the salt, and set the bowl back on the counter. "Well," she said, nervously staring down at the bowl, "it's not burnt."

"No, it's not," Charming said, smiling gently at his baby girl. "Ready for the taste test?"

Emma took a deep breath before nodding and popping a piece of popcorn into her mouth. As soon as the kernel hit her tongue, her eyes positively lit up.

Charming tried a piece of well. Sure enough, his baby had managed just the right balance between sweet and salty. "Well," he said, shooting his daughter a proud grin, "I think you've broken your failed kettle corn streak, Emma."

The slight proud smile on his daughter's face made his own smile grow wider. Snow reached for a piece of popcorn to try as well. "I think you might be the kettle corn expert in the family now," she said, smiling at Emma.

At that, Emma rolled her eyes. "Seriously, guys, it's just popcorn."

But all three of them knew it wasn't just popcorn. In order to make the popcorn, father and daughter had connected. The end result was a bowl of popcorn, yes, but the moments that had led up to that bowl of popcorn … those moments were priceless.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** Here's some Henry being mischievous. Because what sleepover is complete without a prank or two? :)

* * *

There was one thing that was for sure: Henry's mom made a mean batch of kettle corn. The big batch she'd made with Charming looking on was gone in less than twenty minutes! Henry had timed it. From the time they sat down to the time Henry stuck his hand in the bowl to find nothing but crumbs and unpopped kernels, eighteen minutes had passed.

"Either we were all really hungry or your popcorn was really good, Mom," he'd said, causing her to blush and mutter something about ten-thirty at night being prime popcorn-eating time in response.

After that, Henry and Charming made themselves comfortable – or as comfortable as possible – on the floor while Emma and Snow both curled up on the sofa. Soon the entire family was drawn into the second _Back to the Future_ movie in earnest.

After a while, Henry shifted on the floor, sitting up with his back against the couch. A small smile curled on his lips when Emma began combing her fingers through his hair. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that she probably wasn't even aware she was doing it; her eyes were trained on the TV, her attention solely focused on Doc Brown and Marty McFly. Smirking, Henry turned around again and faced the television.

Eventually, the fingers disappeared from his hair and she left her hand stretched out over his shoulder. Smiling, Henry reached across his chest to lightly grasp her fingers. She squeezed his hand, giving him a small smile when he turned his head to meet her gaze. He smiled back and let his hand fall back to his lap.

The movie had been playing for close to an hour when out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw Emma's fingers twitch. _Oh_ no, not yet. Another glance over his shoulder proved his fears were founded; his mom's eyes were closing. "Mom?"

Emma started at the sound of his voice, her eyes snapping open. "Hmm?"

"You're not falling asleep, are you?"

She gave a slight shake of her head. "Mm-mm."

At that, Henry smirked. Sure, she wasn't. It looked like some incentive was in order. "Good, 'cause you do know what happens when you fall asleep during a sleepover, right?"

"I swear to God, kid," she mumbled, fidgeting on the sofa, "if you put shaving cream in my hand, you'll be grounded until you're thirty."

A mischievous grin curled on Henry's lips. He'd been thinking more along the lines of jumping on the couch to wake her up, but hey, if she wanted pranks, he could give her pranks. "Then stay awake and you won't have to worry about it," he teased.

Snow and Charming both snickered quietly. Emma just let out a huff through her nose. Satisfied now that he'd laid out the ground rules regarding falling asleep at a sleepover, Henry turned back to the TV. He smiled when he felt her fingers combing through his hair again.

After a few minutes, her hand stilled. He looked over his shoulder again and sure enough, her eyes were closed. He turned to Snow to tell her to lightly kick her but she was asleep, too! "Oh, come on, guys," he grumbled, his eyes bouncing from one to the other before darting up to the clock. It was only eleven-thirty! There were still three and a half hours to go before the meteor shower! They couldn't fall asleep _now_.

"Let them nap," Charming murmured to him. "Waking them up now will just leave them even more sleepy. We'll wake them up when the movie's over."

"Okay," Henry replied, a disappointed sigh escaping his lips.

Oh, wait a second. Since his mom had indeed fallen asleep at a sleepover, he had to make good on his threat of a prank! With a mischievous glint in his eyes, Henry pushed himself to his feet and headed out of the living area.

"No shaving cream," Charming said, clearly thinking that Henry's destination was the bathroom.

"I'm not doing the shaving cream thing," he replied as he bypassed the bathroom entirely. No, shaving cream in Emma's hand, while funny, would have made her mad. Henry didn't want to make her mad; he wanted to make her laugh. Or at least snicker.

Which was why his destination wasn't the bathroom but his grandmother's bedroom closet. Tucked in the corner was a plastic tote full of art supplies, and somewhere in those art supplies was just what he needed. He pulled the lid off, set it aside, and began rummaging through twenty-eight years' worth of art supplies purchased for an elementary school classroom.

It took him less than a minute to find his holy grail: a set of fine line Crayola markers. Grinning, he snapped the lid back on the tote and ran back to the living room.

As soon as Charming caught sight of the markers in his grandson's hand, he winced. "No marker mustaches, either."

"No marker mustaches," Henry agreed. He'd actually had no intention of doing a marker mustache; drawing on her face was a little too mean. Instead, he pulled the purple marker from the package and began doodling on the back of her still-outstretched hand.

It would be like hand stamps, he figured. Just enough prank as a price for falling asleep without veering into mean territory. Plus, the markers were washable so a little soap and water would take care of the designs if they really bugged her. Still a prank but with no real or lasting repercussions, it would be funny.

He hoped.

Charming must have thought so, too, because he didn't tell him to stop. As a matter of fact, he thought he saw his grandfather hiding a smile as he tore his attention from his grandson and daughter and refocused on the movie.

Henry kept one eye on _Back to the Future_ while keeping the other on his doodles. His first doodle was a purple smiley face but it was his second doodle – a heart – that gave him the perfect idea: Lucky Charms! He hummed the commercial's jingle to himself while drawing each marshmallow charm on her hand.

That would amuse her, at least. They both loved Lucky Charms.

When the movie was over – and oh boy was Henry glad there was a third one, because ending a movie on a To Be Continued was the same kind of mean as putting shaving cream in someone's hand – Charming pushed himself to his feet. "Now you can wake them up. We're going to need another game if we're going to keep them up, though, so think about which one you want to play." With that, he gathered the popcorn bowl and their empty glasses to take to the sink.

While his grandfather washed the dishes, Henry pondered. They hadn't played a single second of Operation, so that was still a viable option. The only thing was, Emma was going to be all kinds of cranky at first when he woke her up. Henry had a funny feeling that attempting to play Operation while tired would only make her crankier.

No, the game needed to be an easy one, at least until she came around a little bit. Chutes and Ladders it was, then.

Now came the fun part: waking them up. With the two of them lying on the couch foot to foot, there was no place for him to jump. Well, then, he was just have to come up with another way.

After a moment of thought, it came to him. Grinning, he knelt down on the floor in front of his grandmother. After taking a breath to prepare himself, he began gently but repeatedly poking his finger into her arm. "You're going to be late for your lessons with Miss Samantha," he murmured into her ear.

He stifled a giggle when Snow's eyes flew open. When she realized she was in her apartment in Storybrooke and not back in her bedchamber in the castle, she let out a breath of relief. Which of course only made Henry's giggle come forth in earnest. "You fell asleep," he told her a little unnecessarily.

"My apologies, Sir Henry," she said through a yawn. Then she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the sofa. Since Emma's legs were in front of hers, she succeeded in accidentally kicking her daughter as she did so.

Emma grunted in her sleep and kicked back, though because Snow had moved, she ended up kicking thin air. Snow and Henry both shared a chuckle at that, and then Henry started on Emma.

He poked his finger into her arm, too, smiling when she tried to shrink out of his reach. He'd already done the "late for school" thing was Snow so he decided to try the "late for work" thing with Emma. "Mom, you've got to get up, you're going to miss your meeting."

All he got in response was a groan, so he increased the poking. "Stop it," she grunted after a long beat, pushing his hand away. "I'm awake."

He and Snow both swallowed chuckles. Only Emma would claim that she was awake while she had her eyes closed and was half-asleep. "No, you're not," Henry replied, his voice verging on singsong.

"Am too. I'm talking to you, aren't I?" She finally blinked her eyes open and glared at her son, who just grinned at her, mischief making his eyes sparkle. "And I wasn't asleep."

"Mom, you were practically snoring."

"I was not." Stifling a yawn, she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair to calm the few tangles that had taken over while she'd been not-at-all asleep. It took her a moment to notice the absence of sound and picture coming from the television, but when she did, she looked at Henry with a perplexed frown. "Why'd you turn the TV off?"

"The movie was over," Charming chuckled as he rejoined his family in the living room. "Want to tell us again how you were awake?"

Emma wrinkled her nose at her father before pushing herself off the couch and sitting down on the floor. Then, master subject-changer that she was, she asked, "What's next on the All-Nighter Agenda?"

"Really-Really-Late-Er Agenda," Henry teasingly corrected her. He snickered when she rolled her eyes. "Is Chutes and Ladders all right with everyone?"

"Works for me," Snow said, joining her family on the floor.

"Same here," Charming added.

"Yeah, I guess," Emma replied.

The three of them shared an amused grin over Emma's head. One day she would actually admit that she had fun during these family activities, but, seeing as she was indeed cranky from having been woken up, that day was not today.

Henry reached over to grab the game as Charming sat down on the floor with everyone. In less than a minute, the first game began.

It took until the middle of Emma's second turn for her to finally register that the back of her hand was covered in marker doodles. Her eyes immediately shot to her son. "Is this your handiwork?" When he nodded proudly, she turned an affronted look on her parents. "And you two let him?"

"I'd fallen asleep myself," Snow admitted.

Charming just grinned at his daughter. "Hey, I denied the shaving cream in your hand and the marker mustaches or anything else on your face. On the balance, you got off easy."

Emma once again turned a glare on her son. "So, wait, if two of us were asleep, how come I'm the only one with marker on my hand?"

Taking a page out of his grandfather's book, Henry simply grinned at his mother.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Emma asked, then blinked when it hit her how ... _parental_ that had sounded.

Henry held up the Crayola box as a peace offering. "One, they're washable. Two, I drew you Lucky Charms! And three, I told you fair and square that there was a price for falling asleep at a sleepover."

The second he'd mentioned the Lucky Charms, the annoyance had faded from her features. Though she was still trying to appear angry, Henry could see the amusement in her eyes. That amusement grew when she waited just a moment before tossing a throw pillow at him.


	7. Chapter 7

The second the throw pillow left Emma's hand, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Henry would retaliate. What she hadn't expected was for her parents to join her kid's cause. They each reached for the closest pillow to them – Snow grabbed her pillow from the couch and David snagged Henry's from the floor – and whipped them at her mere seconds after Henry tossed the throw pillow back at her.

She stared at them, slack-jawed. They were both stifling chuckles. Well, then. What they didn't seem to realize was that she now had three weapons.

Smiling to herself, she threw the pillows back at all three of them, successfully managing to get her father in the chest and Henry off the top of the head. Her mother had apparently been anticipating the toss because she caught the pillow just before it made contact with her face.

She smirked at them, a self-satisfied spark in her eye. That smirk dropped from her face, however, when the three of them looked at each other and nodded. _Uh_ oh.

And sure enough, three pillows flew at her at exactly the same time. She managed to dodge two of them but her father's caught her right in the face. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Henry grab the other throw pillow. "Uncle!" she cried, stifling a laugh and waving her hands in the air. "White flag! You guys win!"

Her parents looked quite proud of themselves. It wasn't until Henry put the throw pillow down, though, that she stood down herself. "So unfair," she said, releasing her hold on her weapon and shaking her head in her parents' direction.

"You started it," Henry replied, smirking.

Well, yeah, she did, but she'd started it with her kid. She arched a questioning eyebrow at her parents, silently asking why they'd joined in. Snow simply grinned at her. "You started it," David repeated in a perfect imitation of Henry's teasing tone, swallowing a chuckle.

Emma just shook her head. Boys.

The pillow fight had lasted all of thirty seconds but the activity had still obliterated their game of Chutes and Ladders. The four playing pieces had scattered this way and that, knocked over by flying pillows and surprised limbs, and the spinner now sat a good foot and a half from the board. Emma grabbed her piece and heaved a sigh. She had no recollection of which space her little cardboard kid had occupied.

Apparently no one else remembered, either, because they all sat their with their pieces in hand. Henry looked up at each adult in turn before suggesting, "Should we just start over, you think?"

That did indeed seem like the best option. After a brief moment of thought, Emma plunked her piece down by the first square, and everyone else followed suit.

Then it was time for Chutes and Ladders: Redux. Everyone took their first couple of turns in silence, which was unusual for them but it was late and they all were tired. Emma hid a smile when she caught Henry swiping his hand over his eyes, rubbing them while trying to make it look like he wasn't. The kid had done well this evening, but it was half past midnight and he was getting sleepy, too, even if he didn't want to admit it.

It was when David stifled a yawn that Henry spoke up, most likely in an effort to keep their minds occupied with simple conversation, "Did you like playing this game when you were little, Mom?"

Emma's breath caught in her throat. Truth be told, she could count the number of times she remembered playing Chutes and Ladders on one hand. The group homes all had collections of games, of course. Games and jigsaw puzzles, all with varying degrees of missing pieces. Some games were impossible to play without all the pieces – her five-year-old self had never forgiven the nine-year-old boy who'd tossed three of the plastic ice cubes from Don't Break the Ice over the fence of the group home's back yard and into the woods because he was sick of listening to the little kids bang on the cubes with the little plastic ice hammers.

Chutes and Ladders was easy enough to play with missing pieces but it was kind of a little kids' game, and she'd been one confused, sad, and angry little kid. After her first family returned her to the system, it took her a while to relax enough to play games with the other kids. By the time she did, Chutes and Ladders was a "baby game."

Out of the corner of her eye, Emma caught her parents exchanging a pained and troubled glance, and she realized to her horror that she must have frozen for a beat.

Her instinct was proven correct when a chastened Henry tore his eyes from hers and looked down at the game board instead. "I'm sorry."

"No, kid, it's okay," she said, swallowing hard. She was going to have to get used to talking about these kinds of things, she supposed. She just wished she didn't have to start getting used to it at twelve-thirty at night. "I never really played this one growing up, not that I remember."

Maybe her first family tried playing it with her. She couldn't be sure; she was so young when they gave her back. Not that she wanted to get into any of _that_ at twelve-thirty at night, either.

"Oh," Henry said, his eyes still downcast.

Emma winced at his dejected posture and tone. All right, a happy childhood memory of hers was clearly needed now, just to make the kid feel less guilty for accidentally bringing up some bad ones.

After a moment of thought, her favorite childhood game came back to her. It wasn't a board game but an outside game her six-year-old self had adored. She only remembered playing it at that one group home, the nicest one she remembered being in because the director actually cared. "The game I really liked to play when I was little was called Wet Feet."

"Wet Feet?" Snow asked, a look of concern clouding her features.

Emma hid a smirk. She could only imagine that Snow was envisioning her little blonde daughter standing in a puddle in some poor excuse for a game. "Our feet weren't really wet," she informed her mother.

Sure enough, Snow released a relieved breath.

Once again, Emma hid a smirk. "We'd take two jump ropes and lay them out parallel to each other. The space in between the jump ropes was supposed to be a river and the spaces outside the ropes were supposed to be the river banks. The object of the game was to jump from one 'bank'" – she even used air quotes – "to the other without jumping in between the ropes. Otherwise you got 'wet feet' and were out of the game."

Smiles lit her parents' faces and Henry actually giggled. "That does sound like fun!" he exclaimed, grinning at her.

"There's one thing I don't understand, though," David said as he flicked the spinner and took his turn. "Couldn't you just put the jump ropes really close together so no one got wet feet?"

"Well, yeah," Emma shrugged, watching Henry take his turn. "The ropes always started close together. After everyone jumped the river, we'd move the ropes further away from each other so the river would get wider. It eventually got to the point that we'd all have to take running starts to get enough momentum to clear it. Then it would get so wide that none of us could clear it, and Mrs. Greenwood would always bring out the yard stick to measure the river for us. We liked seeing if it was wider than the last time we played the game."

Snow smiled at her, then exchanged another glance with her husband. Emma had no doubt in her mind that they were both imagining her as a little kid in jeans and a t-shirt and pigtails, essentially playing long jump with jump ropes.

Emma, on the other hand, was now attempting to imagine what life would have been like had she grown up in the Enchanted Forest. She certainly wouldn't have had Wet Feet. Or Chutes and Ladders or Sorry or Monopoly, come to think of it. She would have had other games, though, other lessons. The tangram game, for one. And she probably would have learned archery from her mother and swordplay from her father and maybe even had equestrian lessons with both of them.

She would have had fun, far more fun than a few bright spots in a lonely, loveless childhood.

With a heavy breath, Emma refocused on the game. A somewhat uncomfortable silence followed. Emma's own thoughts were swirling, her parents were still lost in theirs, and Henry still felt guilty for bringing the room down.

Which, it really wasn't the kid's fault. He'd asked an innocent question, and he was too young to have anticipated how much of a loop for which it, along with the time and their tiredness, would have thrown everyone.

After a moment, she reached out with her doodled-on hand and comfortingly patted Henry's knee. He looked up at her, smiling gratefully. The gesture much have spurred him to offer up his own bright spot in a confusing childhood, because he said, "Mom used to play Candy Land with me."

"She did?" Snow asked gently. Emma felt a smile curling on her own lips.

Henry nodded. "She used to like telling me the story of how this one time when I was really little, I said I wasn't sure I wanted to play because I stunk at Candy Land. She convinced me to play anyway and I guess I won three games in a row."

"Couldn't have stunk too badly," David said through a chuckle.

The boy grinned at his grandfather. "Apparently I was really lucky and got the card that zips you up to the special space closest to the castle. Two games in a row. The other one I just beat her without the special square."

Emma's thoughts were swirling again. She had no doubt that she would have played Candy Land with Henry had she kept him. She really liked hearing that Regina had done normal little-kid things with him.

She didn't remember playing a lot of Candy Land, herself. Not when she was really little. It was in the same category as Chutes and Ladders, come to think of it … a "baby game." When she was ten, though, she used to play it with a three-year-old boy in her group home. He'd just been placed in the group home and was so scared that he didn't speak. In some ways, he reminded Emma a lot of herself. He liked the colorful Candy Land board, though, so, on a hunch, Emma had taught him how to play. She had to help him with the colors because he hadn't gotten enough attention to learn them before, and for a while, he would only talk to her. By the time she placed with another foster family, he was playing with all the other kids like nothing had ever been wrong.

That was a nice memory, helping that little boy, though again, not one she wanted to share at … ugh, quarter of one in the morning, now.

After Henry's Candy Land story, everyone else seemed to relax a little bit. Even Emma managed to draw herself out of her morose thoughts and smile when anyone landed on a ladder and chuckle when anyone landed on a chute.

Things were going well for Emma, actually. Really well. She was winning! And then she landed on the long slide, the one that took her from square eighty-seven to square twenty-four. "Seriously?" she groaned as she moved her piece back down to what might as well have been the bottom of the board. "So unfair."

Henry snickered at her, which came right back to bite him in the behind when he landed on the big slide, too. "Aw, man!" he muttered, following the slide with his piece and setting it beside Emma's.

"Karma's a bitch, isn't it?" Emma asked, smirking at her kid.

"Oh, Emma," Snow winced, then sighed in resignation to her daughter's colorful language.

Emma just raised her eyebrows at her mother and grinned.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** I totally believe that Daddy Charming makes everything better. :)

* * *

It soon became apparent to Charming that if he and his family were going to stay awake long enough to actually watch the impending meteor shower, they were in desperate need of something more mentally and physically demanding than Chutes and Ladders.

Emma had quieted down even more than normal and was rather curt when she did speak, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind just how tired she was. Though Henry was rubbing his eyes and yawning what seemed like every few seconds, he absolutely refused to admit that he would be asleep in seconds if he lay down. Snow was fighting to keep her eyes open, and Charming had felt himself drifting a couple of times.

Not even Operation or Scattergories would help with this. No, only one thing would, and he could imagine just how each member of his family was going to react to his suggestion.

When Emma tiredly plunked her piece down on square one hundred, thereby winning the game, Charming clapped his hands to capture his family's attention. The sudden sound startled all three of them, and he had to hide a smirk when a cranky Emma glared at him."All right," he said, knowing full well that her glare was about to grow to if-looks-could-kill status. "Everyone up and outside."

Everyone's reactions were so expected that he might as well have placed bets. Emma groaned, scowling at him. Snow shot him a perplexed frown. Only Henry perked up, eyes eager as he folded the game board back up and set it back in the box. "We're going outside?"

"There's still an hour and a half left before the meteor shower," Emma argued, her voice verging on a whine. "What the hell are we going to do outside for an hour and a half?"

Charming actually hadn't gotten that far with his plan yet. All he knew was that nobody in the living room was going to be able to last the next hour and a half if they didn't get up and moving.

Moving! That was it! "We're going for a walk."

Emma groaned again. "A _walk_? It's one-thirty in the morning. I'm _not_ going for a walk at one-thirty in the morning."

"We're not going for a walk around the block, Emma. We're going to the woods."

She gaped at him. "Are you high?"

He swallowed a chuckle and met an amused Snow's eyes over Emma's head. "Not at all. For an event like a meteor shower, you want to be as far away from city lights as you can. We'll be able to see it better without all the artificial ambient light."

"I hate to tell you," she grumbled, "but Storybrooke doesn't have city lights. Storybrooke isn't a city, and pretty much everyone but us is asleep right now."

Oh, yes. Her crankiness was out in full force, it seemed. The only way to handle a sleepy Emma's crankiness was pretty much to ignore it. She'd come around once the activity was underway; she always did. "Not the point. Let's go, everyone up."

He stood, making it clear that he expected all three of them to follow suit. And sure enough, they did. Snow and Henry stood right away but Emma stared daggers at him for another beat or two before standing herself.

Charming hid a smirk. Did he know his daughter or what?

Of course, with their next activity being a trek through the woods in the middle of the night, getting everyone ready to go wasn't as simple as getting coats off the hook and shoes out from under the bed. Snow wanted to pack a blanket for everyone to sit on once they got to their meteor showing viewing spot, and she decided she also needed to bring along some bottles of water. Just in case they got thirsty, she said. Henry insisted on a snack to go with the water and wheedled his grandmother into tucking the package of mint Oreos into the tote as well.

And the moment Snow agreed to the pack the cookies, too, Charming saw the first hint of a smile breaking through Emma's tired grouchiness.

Once snacks and drinks were packed and everyone had put on their shoes and coats and grabbed flashlights, the little family trundled out of the apartment and down to Snow's station wagon.

The packing had perked Snow up considerably and she insisted that she drive because Charming and Emma were both pretty much asleep on their feet. "What about me?" Henry asked cheekily.

"Nice try, kid," Emma smirked as she opened the passenger side back door. "Just get in the car, will you? And not in the driver's seat."

Henry grinned at his grandparents before climbing into the back seat on the driver's side. Charming and Snow shared an amused smile and then got themselves settled in the front seat. Snow set the tote bag containing the blanket and snacks at Charming's feet, turned the key in the ignition, and took off for the woods.

As the family made the quiet drive through a sleepy Storybrooke, Charming peeked over his shoulder to check on the two passengers in the back seat. Henry was staring out the window, craning his neck in an effort to spot any and all shooting stars that might have been putting in an early appearance. Emma was staring out the window as well, but her mind didn't seem to be at all on the upcoming meteor shower. Her mind appeared to be miles elsewhere.

Charming frowned. Something had changed from the apartment to now. Something was bothering her, something more than being dragged out of the house and into the woods at quarter of two in the morning. He had no idea what she was thinking, but the pensive expression on her face broke his heart.

Maybe he'd have to have a little chat with her as they tried to find their meteor shower watching spot. Or attempt to have a little chat with her, at least.

Soon enough, Snow eased the station wagon onto the shoulder of the dirt access road, pulling up alongside the tree line. After she shifted into park and cut the engine, everyone piled out of the car. "I'm leading!" Henry called, switching on his flashlight and heading towards the path. "Everyone follow me!"

Snow managed to grab the collar of his coat as he passed her, tugging him to a stop. "_We're_ leading," she said, winking at him.

He giggled, nodding in acquiescence. "Follow us!" he amended, much to everyone's amusement.

Of course, it was Snow who was really leading her family through the woods. Her time on the run had taught her a thing or two about forests, and she had an uncanny ability to find the clearings through the trees. Snow and Henry chatted as they walked down the path, flashlight beams swinging and crisscrossing in front of them.

Emma trudged along after them, her flashlight beam trained on the ground in front of her. Charming trudged along beside her, making sure to keep pace with her so as not to leave her walking alone.

"Penny for your thoughts," he said to her after a long moment.

She shrugged almost dismissively. "It's nothing. I'm just tired."

He was quiet for a moment, trying to think of the best way to answer her. "That you are," he said eventually, "but this isn't just you being tired, Emma. Something's going on in that head of yours, and it's okay if you don't want to tell me but I really think you'd feel better if you did."

For a brief moment, she remained completely passive. Then she shrugged again.

Charming let out a soft sigh but he hadn't yet given up hope. He was coming to learn that patience and understanding went a long way with his baby girl. When she was ready, she would talk.

And sure enough, she did. "I've never really done anything like this before."

"What, watching a meter shower?"

"No. All of this."

Charming felt his heart clench in his chest. His poor daughter has never experienced anything like this, not just the staying up until the wee hours of the morning but the games and the togetherness and the simple act of being with the people one loves. Not until Henry found her in Boston and she found people who loved her and _wanted_ to spend the time with her. He took a breath and tried to keep the emotional tremor out of his voice as he said, "Well, you're handling it beautifully."

At that, she scoffed. "No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are." He reached out and grasped her free hand, tugging her to a surprised stop. She turned to face him, the dim the illumination from their flashlights casting shadows across their faces. Even still, there was enough light for him to look right into his precious daughter's eyes. "We know this isn't easy for you, Emma. We know it's going to take time and we know it's going to happen at your pace. But the fact is, you _are_ letting it happen, and that's all we can ask for."

Even in the dim light, he could see Emma's eyes starting to glisten. He gave her a gentle smile, releasing her hand and brushing his thumb along her cheek instead. "One of these days, you will understand just how much we love you, Emma Swan. We all love you to the moon and back, kiddo, and one day, you'll understand. You'll just _know. _It'll be so obvious that you don't even think about it, as natural as the sun rising and setting every day. But until then, we're going to keep doing what we're doing because we're not going anywhere."

Emma sniffled in the darkness, blinking rapidly in the soft light to quell her tears. "I've, um, never have had that before, either."

"I know, and I'm so sorry for that, Emma. You deserved to have that." He smiled at her, and she gave him a shy smile in return. And somehow he knew that he'd pushed her enough for one very late night. It was now time for a joke to make her comfortable again. "Come on. We'd better catch up with Snow and Henry. After all, we're heading into dangerous territory."

"Dangerous territory?" she asked, frowning. "We're in the middle of the Storybrooke woods, not the African jungle."

"We're heading to a field of shooting stars, Emma. We should have brought bullet-proof vests!"

Emma rolled her eyes, groaning. "Ugh. Who said you could start with the terrible dad jokes?"

"Well, I'm a dad, right? I think they kind of come with the territory."

That caused a smile to pull at her lips. "Yeah, I guess so."

The two of them started walking again, pace quickened so they could catch up with Snow and Henry. When Snow heard the dead leaves crunching underfoot on the path behind her, she sent a questioning glance over her shoulder at her husband. He just smiled at her, letting her know that everything was okay now.

He would tell her what had happened, of course, but later, out of earshot of the kids.

Snow sent him a smile back. Just before she faced forward, she caught Emma unconsciously sidling closer to Charming as they walked. Both her and Charming's smiles softened; their patience was very often rewarded, and there was no greater reward than connecting with their daughter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** Mother/daughter time! Snow's and Emma's shared activity here is something both my mother and I used to do as kids. My mom probably taught me when I was super-little, but still, I used it as inspiration. Also: y'all rock. :)

* * *

Snow expertly led her family through the woods and soon enough, they emerged from the trees in a small clearing. The sky above them was filled more stars than they would have ever been able to see from the fire escape of their little apartment. The space was wide enough to offer a great overhead view but still small enough to be completely private.

In short, she felt it was as close to perfect as they were going to get. She turned to her family. "Does this work for everyone?"

"I'm seriously about to collapse," an exhausted Emma grumbled through a sigh. "If this spot saves us from more walking, I'm all for it."

Snow smirked in her cranky daughter's direction before looking to her husband and grandson for their approval. The boys glanced at each other, then at Emma, and then back at each other. Snow swallowed a chuckle; neither of them seemed willing to advocate for another stargazing spot, mostly out of fear of annoying the Princess of Crankiness.

And sure enough, they both agreed. "Right here is fine with me," Henry said, shooting a smile first at his mother and then at his grandmother.

"I concur," Charming said with a wink in his wife's direction.

"Perfect," Snow smiled at the same time as Emma muttered, "Thank God."

Snow managed to turn her snicker into a cough before anyone heard it. She walked out to the middle of the clearing, eyes trained on the sky. When she reached a point where the tops of the trees were no longer in her field of vision in any direction, she set the tote down at her feet and drew the blanket from it.

She spread the blanket over the soft grass and smiled when her exhausted family practically collapsed onto it, plopping down to get off their aching feet and rest their tired muscles. Snow joined them, squeezing in between Emma and Henry, and for a long moment, the four of them just sat in comfortable silence.

Eventually, a somewhat rejuvenated Henry trained his flashlight beam on his watch to check the time. "All right! It's two-nineteen!"

That, apparently, was still too long for Emma, because she groaned. "We still have thirty-one minutes?"

Snow and Charming exchanged an amused smile. "We have forty-one minutes," Charming corrected her through a light chuckle.

She blinked at him as her sluggish brain checked her father's calculation. "That's it," she sighed, shaking her head. "I'm officially so tired that I've lost the ability to do simple math in my head. So, what the hell are we going to do for the next _forty_-one minutes?"

"It's not as if we're waiting for a concert to start, Emma," Snow told her gently. "The meteor shower _peaks_ at three, but we will be able to see shooting stars before then. There just won't be as many of them."

"That may very well be, but if I do nothing but sit here looking up at the sky on the off chance of seeing some shooting stars, I'm going to pass out on all of you. I've been up for like, twenty hours now."

Not for the first time, it was on the tip of Snow's tongue to tell her baby to lie down and go to sleep. Henry would have teasingly protested, of course, but Emma was _exhausted_. However, she also knew that Emma was too stubborn to give up now. She'd made it to two-nineteen; there was no way she going to let herself fall asleep before the meteor shower.

As a peace offering – and to make her cranky princess smile – Snow dug the package of Oreos out of the tote and handed it to her daughter. "Mint and chocolate ought to keep you going for the next little while."

Even in the dim illumination from their flashlights, the smile was visible in Emma's eyes. "Thanks."

At the sound of the wrapper crinkling as Emma opened the package, Henry cried, "Hey, no fair not sharing!"

Everyone chuckled, and after Emma had snagged a couple of cookies, she handed the package off to her son. The cookies were passed around from family member to family member until everyone had eaten their fill. "Ugh, get it away from me," Emma groaned when Henry tried to hand it back to her after they'd both consumed a good seven cookies. "I can't eat another bite."

Chuckling at her daughter's exhaustion-heightened dramatics, Snow slipped the package from Henry's hand and tucked it back in the tote. Then she leaned back on her palms and stared up at the sky, watching for a shooting star or two.

It took a few minutes, but she finally did see one. She gasped and sat up straight, glancing around to see if anyone else had been watching with her.

Clearly not. Charming was entertaining Henry with a story about a night he had spent stargazing with one of the lambs on the farm. "It was just Lulabelle and me in the fields," he was saying while Henry sat in rapt attention. "The sky was perfectly clear and I swear I could see more stars in that sky than I'd ever seen before or since."

"Wow," Henry breathed.

Emma was listening to her father's story while she fiddled with a small stick in her hand. To Snow's surprise, she was carefully peeling the bark from the stick, exposing the smooth wood underneath.

It didn't look to Snow that she'd started peeling the stick out of any conscious effort. It was more like she was doing it simply to keep her hands busy while she listened to her father's story. And Snow knew, because she used to do the same thing whenever she would have lessons out on the grounds with Miss Samantha. She would pick up small sticks, about the same length as twigs but thicker, and peel the bark off with her fingernails. She'd always assumed it was just one of those childhood quirks, like climbing trees or playing in the mud (neither of which she did).

And here her daughter was, displaying the same quirk.

She was only drawn from her surprise when Emma let out a soft sigh. "What's the matter?" Snow asked her.

"I've got one little strip of bark left and it just will not come off." Her tone was distracted, and Snow didn't even know if she was aware that she'd answered out loud.

But oh, how well Snow remembered that frustration. No matter how much she tried to separate the bark from the wood, it just would not budge. "I used to hate it when that happened."

That got Emma's attention. She shot her head up and stared at her mother. "What?"

Snow held up one of the sticks Emma had already peeled. "I think you might have gotten this trait from me. I used to do the same thing as a child."

Emma blinked at her. "You were a princess. You mean to tell me that a princess had nothing better to do than peel sticks?"

"I was indeed a princess, Emma, but young princesses are still just little girls. They play outside and occupy their time with silly games and activities just like any small child." She smiled at her baby. "Plus, peeling sticks came in quite handy during those long nights on the run. It gave me something to do to pass the time."

Emma stared at her for a beat before averting her gaze. Snow winced. She'd been just on the edge of connecting with Emma and then something had changed. She had no idea what had caused the change in Emma's demeanor but she was determined to find out. "What is it?" she asked, making sure to keep her voice gentle.

"I used to do this to pass the time, too," Emma replied softly. "During recess, mostly. I didn't … well, I moved from school to school so much that after a while, trying to make friends seemed kind of pointless. No one ever gave me a hard time about the stick thing or anything, but no one else did it, either. And now … knowing that if I'd grown up with you, we could have done it together ..."

Snow felt her eyes burning with impending tears. Her poor sweet baby girl had been so lonely and so unloved and so ignored her entire life, and she hadn't deserved it. She'd grown up so alone, so neglected, and she shouldn't have.

She slipped the stick out of Emma's grasp, set it down on the blanket with the others, and took her daughter's hands, squeezing them tightly. "We would have done it together, Emma. We wanted so much more for you than the life you had. So much more. We wanted you surrounded by love and togetherness."

Emma nodded, swallowing hard and blinking rapidly against her own impending tears. "I know. And I know you did what you had to do to save me. It just … sucks."

A gentle smile pulled at Snow's lips. As much as she bemoaned Emma's mouth sometimes, there sure was no better description for their situation. "That's the word for it, all right."

She was rewarded with a tired half-smile in return.

Sensing that she'd pushed Emma as far as she should, considering her exhaustion level, Snow ran her thumbs up and down the backs of Emma's hands once before letting them go. Then she gave Emma her almost-peeled stick back and felt around the edge of the blanket for a stick to peel for herself.

And so the two of them sat, side by side, peeling the bark from sticks while Charming continued his stories. Henry had apparently wanted to hear more about Lulabelle because he was now telling the boy about the time he'd sprained his ankle out in the fields and Lulabelle ran back to the house to get his mother.

"I swear he makes half of these up," Emma murmured to Snow, amusement in her tone. "That sounds like something he stole from an episode of _Lassie_."

Even though Snow had no idea what Emma was talking about, she smiled anyway. Truthfully, she thought Charming had stretched the truth on a few of his farm stories as well.

Emma eventually finished her stick, peeling off the last of the stubborn bark and setting it down with the others. "It's so weird how accomplished you feel when you actually get every bit of bark off the damn thing," she sighed, shaking her head at herself.

"Not at all," Snow replied. "With a little bit of prodding and a little bit of patience, you've turned something rough, knotted, and cracked into something smooth and new and lovely."

Which could have been a metaphor for what her entire family was trying to do, to be honest. After all, a little prodding and a little patience was exactly what was needed with her family. A little patience and a little prodding to break through the effects of time and breach protective walls to expose the beauty underneath.

Apparently, Emma had made that exact same connection as well, because she was now staring at Snow in wonder, her eyes glistening in the low illumination of the flashlight. "Thank you," she said softly.

"For what?"

"Having the patience to peel sticks."

And with that, Snow knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Emma was indeed making the same metaphor. She smiled at her baby girl, reaching up to caress Emma's cheek with her thumb. "You're welcome, sweetheart."


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:** As always, I apologize for nothing. ;)

* * *

Charming kept his little family quite entertained with his Lulabelle stories. Snow kept an eye on Emma while Charming spun his tales, wanting to make sure her daughter was all right after their conversation. She knew she'd had a talk with Charming, too, when they'd hung back on the path through the woods, and she was afraid that between the two of them, they might have pushed Emma a bit too much for one ridiculously late night.

But so far, Emma seemed to be fine. Quiet, but her quietness seemed to owe mostly to her exhaustion and not any kind of emotional withdrawal. Snow let out a soft breath of relief, which turned into a soft smile when Emma, who had just finished peeling a stick, fumbled around in the dark for two new sticks and handed one to Snow.

At somewhere around quarter of three, Henry's gaze traveled up to the sky just in time to see his first shooting star. "I saw one!" he cried, his sheer excitement causing him to interrupt his grandfather's latest Lulabelle tale. "It's starting!"

"Where have you been, kid?" Emma asked teasingly, smirking at her son. "I've seen a few already."

"I have, too," Snow gently added, shifting on the blanket. She set her stick down and leaned back on her palms.

"I have, three," Charming interjected, winking at his grandson. Henry groaned at the utter lame-dad-joke-ness of that lame dad joke while Emma simply rolled her eyes. Snow and Charming exchanged an amused glance over the kids' heads.

"You have time to make jokes but no one thought to tell me it was starting?" Henry cried. "Not fair!"

"You were too busy enjoying David's made-up sheep stories," Emma teased. She finally set her stick aside and assumed the same position as her mother, legs stretched out in front of her, palms on the blanket behind her, arms supporting her upper body weight.

Henry looked over at Emma and copied her position as well. Snow smirked. Both Henry and Emma would be asleep faster than a meteor could shoot across the sky if either of them lay down, and they knew it. Hence why both of them were sitting up and uncomfortably craning their necks upward rather than assuming a more comfortable position lying down on their backs.

"Hey, I did not make up a single word of those stories," Charming argued, his tone just this side of teasingly indignant.

"Please!" Emma retorted, her eye-roll reflex in overdrive. "You really expect me to believe that a lamb ran all the way back to your house to get your mother when you sprained your ankle? Lulabelle was a sheep, not a dog. What, did you grow up in your own episode of _Lassie_?"

"Believe what you want, but I swear to you that it happened just the way I said it did."

"Uh huh, sure." When Emma returned her gaze to the sky with an indulgent shake of her head, Charming met Snow's gaze and winked.

Snow had to bite her bottom lip to keep from chuckling. Charming was indeed telling the complete truth – about the Lulabelle the Hero story, at least – but since Emma would never believe it, there was little sense in belaboring the point.

For a little while, they all sat in silence and waited for the show to begin. Within a few minutes, their field of vision was filled with little blue and white streaks of light darting this way and that across the sky. "Whoa," Emma murmured, her voice low in amazement.

"What is it?" Snow whispered to her.

"I don't remember seeing nearly this many during the one I watched when I was little," she whispered back. "Maybe there's something to be said about getting away from the city lights, after all."

Snow smiled kindly at her even while her heart clenched in her chest. There was nothing she wouldn't have given to have been able to watch a meteor shower with Emma when she was little. There was nothing she wouldn't have given to have been able to watch her daughter grow up, to have been there to kiss a scraped knee or to have celebrated a good report card. To have taught her to walk, to dance, to shoot a bow and arrow. To have raised her from babyhood to adulthood. Nothing at all.

"What was it like?" Snow asked softly, praying that Emma wouldn't shut down the conversation. "The meteor shower when you were little, I mean."

Emma shrugged. "Pretty much like this one, just not as many meteors."

Snow arched an eyebrow at her daughter. That wasn't what she'd meant, and Emma knew it.

She'd expected that Emma's deflection was going to be the end of it, arched eyebrow or no arched eyebrow. She'd expected Emma to shrug again and to train her gaze back on the sky, letting the conversation drop right then and there.

So it was a surprise to her when Emma sighed and said, "We were _really_ little. One of my foster brothers woke me up and dragged me outside. I didn't understand why, not until he told me he had something he wanted to show me and then told me to look up."

A soft smile curled on Snow's lips as she imagined her small daughter, hair mussed from her sound sleep, taking the hand of a small boy and letting him lead her outside. "How did he even know about it?"

"His teacher at school had mentioned it. I have no idea why because he was only in the third grade, so it wasn't like going outside in the middle of the night to watch the shooting stars was really an option for most of those kids. Anyway, he'd set his alarm so he would be awake to watch it and when he saw the first shooting star … I don't know, for some reason, he thought of me."

"How old were you?"

"Six. I was in first grade."

Snow wondered if that young boy, even at eight years old, had recognized a need in six-year-old Emma to believe in magic. Not fairy-tale magic, of course, but the natural magic and wonder of the world around her. Her eyes began to fill with tears, tears of regret and injustice that she didn't get to share her baby's childhood with her, tears of sorrow for her sweet girl who'd experienced far too much disinterest and neglect and not nearly enough love and affection, and tears of gratitude for the young boy who'd taken an interest in her little daughter.

A soft, nostalgic smile had curled on Emma's lips, and it was clear to Snow now that she was lost in her own memory. So lost, in fact, that she continued the story, completely unaware of the fact that she was doling out childhood memories she usually tried so hard to keep quiet. "We had to sneak out of the house and into the back yard after he woke me up. Imagine two little kids trying so very hard to be quiet. With every little sound we made, we were convinced someone else was going to wake up and catch us. I think it took us ten minutes just to go down the stairs! At the time, it seemed like an adventure, one we shouldn't have even been going on, which just made it all the more fun."

Oh, if Snow and Charming had raised Emma, they would have watched meteor showers and sunrises and sunsets with her. They would have taken her out on the grounds in the middle of the night just to go stargazing. They would have taken days here and there to go walking in the woods with no real direction other than getting out and exploring. Emma's childhood would have been filled with small-child adventures, ones she wouldn't have had to hide.

"We never did get caught," Emma continued, her tone almost dreamy. "From then on, it was our little secret."

"It sounds like a lovely secret, Emma," Snow replied, her voice just as soft as her daughter's. "Did the two of you make wishes on the stars?"

The smile dropped from Emma's face, and Snow could have kicked herself. With that one question, she'd officially pushed it too far.

Or not quite too far. To her surprise, Emma looked over at her, green eyes meeting in the low illumination of the flashlights. "We didn't tell each other what we wished for, but I have no doubt in my mind we wished for the same thing. All of us did. Every star we saw, every birthday candle we blew out, every wishbone we got to break … it was always the same wish."

She didn't continue but Snow could fill in the blanks herself. All of those children wished with all their hearts for their forever families.

Snow couldn't stop herself from reaching out and grasping her daughter's hand. Emma started, then smiled gratefully and squeezed her hand back before letting go and returning her attention to the sky.

With Emma's attention focused on the stars, Snow glanced across the blanket at her husband. If the glistening in his eyes was any indication, he'd heard every word of their conversation. He nodded at her proudly, letting her know that he believed she'd handled everything with aplomb. She smiled and, following Emma's lead, looked back up at the sky.

The next few minutes passed in silence. When a flash of blue streaked across their entire field of vision before finally giving up the fight and flickering out, Emma let out another soft, "Whoa."

"I wished on that one," Henry spoke up, his voice low in wonder. "It was the strongest."

"And what, pray tell, did you wish for?" Charming asked teasingly.

"I can't tell you," Henry laughingly shot back. "It won't come true if I tell you."

"A hint?"

"Nope. Not even a hint."

"All right, how about this." Charming shifted on the blanket, sitting up straight to address his entire family. "Everyone gets a silly wish and a serious wish. The serious wishes are the ones we keep to ourselves, but we share the silly wishes."

"I'm game," Snow said, sitting up straight as well. "I wish we had more of Emma's kettle corn."

Henry and Charming snickered, but Emma groaned. "Oh my God, how can you even think of food right now?"

"I'm not the one who ate ten Oreos."

"It was like, seven, not ten, but I wasn't even thinking about the Oreos. It's the middle of the night!"

"You've never heard of a midnight snack?" Henry asked, chuckling.

"Yeah, at midnight!" Emma argued. "It's three-ten in the morning. The thought of eating _anything_ right now is gross."

It was only after everyone's snickering died down that Henry piped up with his silly wish. "I wish I had a puppy."

Emma groaned again, cuing another round of snickers and snorts. "No. Don't even think about it, kid."

Charming winked at Snow before grinning at his daughter. "Well, since talking about Lulabelle made me miss her, I wish I had a lamb."

"That's even worse than a puppy!" Emma cried, true to Charming's suspicion. "Wait a sec, was Lulabelle housebroken?"

"She only spent her first few weeks in the house because she was born premature, but no, she wasn't."

"Yuck!"

"Your turn, Emma," Snow said through everyone's chuckles.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Emma said, "I wish I could go to bed."

"Soon, sweetheart," Snow told her softly after the snickers had once again died down.

"Not soon enough," she grumbled.

Still, there was an expression of contentment on Emma's face that even her grouchiness couldn't mask. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was having fun. And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she enjoyed these activities with her family.

After a long moment of silence, Snow shifted closer to Emma. There was something pressing on her mind, a question she wasn't even sure Emma would answer, but she had to ask. "Was your serious wish tonight the same one you made during your last meteor shower?"

To Snow's utter shock, Emma didn't shy away from the question. Instead, she turned her head to meet her mother's gaze and smiled. And her answer was so wonderful, so amazing, and made Snow feel lighter than air: "Nope. I don't need to make that one anymore."


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note:** Because I'm still riding high on the Charming Family feels train from the finale and because I apparently can't ever do a story without it, here's some cotton candy fluff. ;)

* * *

For a good long while, the family watched the meteors streak across the sky mostly in silence. Every so often, there would be a low murmur of awe from Henry or Emma but for the most part, everyone's attention was focused solely above.

At one point, Snow glanced over at Charming to find him gazing at her with a loving expression on his face. When she wrinkled her brow at him in confusion, he nodded towards Emma and Henry, who were both still craning their necks, staring up at the sky. The excitement on Henry's face and the sheer wonder on Emma's made a smile pull at Snow's mouth, and when she looked back at Charming, she understood. This – sitting under the stars with no one around but their family – was absolutely perfect.

As it got closer to four, the meteors slowed from multiple streaks through the sky at a time to one every thirty or so seconds. After a quick glance at her family, each person in various stages of wakefulness, Snow decided it was time to take them home. "All right, everyone," she said as she stretched and pushed herself to her feet. "We're packing up and heading out."

"But the meteor shower's not over yet," a sleepy Henry whined.

All three adults shared a smirk in the dim beams of their flashlights. Henry had almost been asleep sitting up and probably hadn't even seen the last couple of meteors anyway. Snow saw no need to call attention to that fact, however. "By the time we pack up and get back to the apartment, it will be. You can still watch out the car window as we head home, but I think it's past time we get everyone tucked in bed."

Emma, who had groaned softly at the thought of expending the energy to stand and walk back to the car, perked up a bit at the mention of being able to go to bed. "No complaints from me," she said as she tiredly got to her feet.

Snow smirked; she hadn't thought Emma would take too much convincing.

When Charming stood up as well, Henry heaved a sigh. Three against one was a losing battle, and he knew it. After he got to his feet, he stepped off the blanket so Snow and Charming could shake it out and refold it and walked up to Emma, wrapping his arms around her in a sleepy hug. "Thanks, Mom."

She returned the embrace automatically even as her brow furrowed in confusion. Not that she was looking a gift Henry hug in the mouth, but … "What are you thanking me for?"

He rested his chin against her torso as he smiled up at her. "For agreeing to all of this in the first place. Tonight was so awesome."

A soft smile curled on her lips as she stared down at her son. "You're welcome." After a moment, her smile turned sardonic. "Just don't get used to it, kid. We are _not_ doing this every single time there's a meteor shower."

"Okay," Henry sighed. His smile was now mischievous, which told Snow that he was going to at least ask to do this every single time there was a meteor shower, even if he didn't expect Emma to agree. Then he let Emma out of the embrace and turned to help his grandfather repack the tote.

Snow stepped up to Emma, a little smirk on her lips. "He's going to ask to do this every time now, isn't he?" Emma asked through a resigned sigh.

"I believe he is," Snow replied.

"Wonderful."

Snow reached out to fiddle with a lock of Emma's hair. "You're going to have to learn how to resist his Puppy Dog Eyes."

Emma sighed again, making Snow swallow a grin. That, apparently, was going to take some trying.

The trudge through the woods was far less energetic this time around, which was saying something; the first trudge wasn't all that energetic to begin with. The family walked in silence, the four of them side by side, Snow and Charming flanking Emma and Henry walking on Charming's other side. All evening, Charming and Snow had wanted nothing more than to be close to Emma and all evening, they had been. Her exhaustion helped; her walls were far lower than normal in the absence of the energy to keep them erected. The trick now was getting her to be this comfortable around them when she wasn't about to fall asleep on the spot.

The second Snow's station wagon came into view through the darkness and the trees, a relieved smile lit Emma's face. One step closer to bedtime, Snow assumed with an amused smile of her own. The last few steps to the car passed quickly, and soon everyone was settled inside, Snow once again driving, Charming in the passenger seat next to her, and Henry and Emma buckled up beside each other in the back.

After glancing in the rear view mirror at her grandson and daughter, Snow turned the key in the ignition and took off for the apartment.

For home.

The drive back to their building from the woods wasn't a long one but at just a touch after four in the morning, it was long enough for Snow to lose her entire family to sleep. By the time she pulled into her parking space, Emma and Henry had dozed off, Henry's head on Emma's shoulder and Emma's head resting against Henry's, and Charming was trying valiantly but to no avail to keep his own head up. Snow let out a soft sigh as she took a moment to just drink in the sight of her slumbering family.

This right here … this was how it should have been. She should have had these late nights or early mornings with Emma when she was Henry's age. She should have had these moments of togetherness. She should have had time with her baby when she was still a baby, when she was a child, and when she was a teenager.

Before Snow could get too bogged down with emotion – because she, too, wanted to go to bed at some point before the sun started to rise, thank you very much – she leaned over and tapped Charming's knee to wake him. He was still in a light enough sleep that the touch startled him. He gasped as his eyes snapped open, and Snow cringed in apology. "We're home," she said a little unnecessarily.

Charming gave his wife a sheepish smile before looking over his shoulder at the two sleeping passengers in the back seat. The smile that lit his face at the sight warmed Snow's heart. "That we are," he murmured.

She let him have a moment to bask in the peace and togetherness before climbing out of the car to tend to the "kids." By silent agreement, Snow and Charming each crossed to the opposite side of the station wagon so Charming could get Henry and Snow could take Emma.

Henry was pretty much a lost cause, they figured. They might be able to wake him enough that he could be led into the apartment by the hand but on the off chance that they couldn't, Charming was going to need to carry him inside. Snow knew she could handle Emma because, as Mary Margaret, she'd lived through plenty of Emma's grouchiness upon being awakened.

Which was really cute, by the way, though Snow had never once admitted that to Emma.

She opened the car door and gently shook her daughter awake. "Come on, Emma. It's time to go inside and go to bed."

Emma groaned as she lifted her head off Henry's, her eyes fluttering open. "There's something so wrong about being woken up just to go to bed," she grumbled as she stretched her arms and legs. On the other side of the car, Charming ducked in to rouse Henry.

"I know, sweetie," Snow softly replied, clear amusement in her tone. She waited a moment but a still half-asleep Emma didn't move another muscle. Hiding a smirk, Snow added, "The longer you sit here, though, the longer it'll be before you can go back to sleep."

That seemed to get her attention. She blinked confusedly at Snow a couple of times before unbuckling her seat belt and climbing out of the car, grasping onto her mother's waiting hand.

Charming had indeed been able to rouse Henry to the point that he could walk on his own, but the poor boy was clearly not at all awake or aware. Snow highly doubted he'd even remember this in the morning. The boy held onto Charming's hand, trudging after him as he led him through the front door of the building and up the two flights of stairs to their apartment. Emma and Snow followed behind them, Emma hiding a yawn and Snow hiding a smile at the domesticity of the entire activity.

She couldn't help but wonder if this is how she would have felt on the nights when celebrations at the castle ran late, walking her half-asleep daughter to bed like this.

Once inside the apartment, Charming led Henry to the living area and got the boy settled on the floor where his blanket and pillow were still set up. It was a good thing Henry had brought everything down earlier because there was no way they would have been able to get him up to the loft. He was sound asleep before Charming finished tucking him in.

Emma probably could have made it up to the loft but she headed straight for the couch as if on auto-pilot. She curled up on her side and pulled the blanket up over her legs, her eyes sliding closed. "G'night, guys," she managed to mumble before falling asleep herself.

Snow and Charming exchanged a touched smile and then the two of them took the opportunity to tuck Emma in. Goodness knew she would have had their heads if she woke but she never felt Charming pull the blanket up all the way and tuck it around her shoulders or Snow press a soft kiss to her temple. And when Snow approached Henry to say her good nights, Charming gave Emma a good night kiss of his own.

As soon as the kids were settled and their nighttime ministrations were complete, Snow and Charming approached each other, exchanging a loving look. "Look what we made," he murmured to her, gazing into her eyes before nodding towards Henry and Emma. "Well, she made Henry, but you know what I mean."

Snow chuckled; she absolutely knew what he meant. "They're absolutely perfect," she whispered back.

Then, with nothing else left to do, the two of them finally got themselves settled in bed. In keeping with Henry's plan for the evening, Charming settled down on the floor with him after turning off the overhead light. Snow curled up on the opposite end of the sofa, her feet touching Emma's. "You ready?" she whispered, hand on the knob of the table lamp.

"Ready," he whispered back, and with one twist of her fingers, she snapped off the lamp, leaving the room in complete darkness.

Snow made herself comfortable on the couch and murmured, "Good night, Charming."

"Good night, Snow."

And then, for some inexplicable reason, Emma sarcastically mumbled, "Good night, Mary Ellen. Good night, John Boy."

It was surely a reference of some kind – they usually were – but it was lost on Snow, whose heart skipped a beat and then started pounding wildly. Had Emma been awake the whole time? She couldn't have been! She wouldn't have stood for the tucking in and the good night kisses if she had been awake. "Go back to sleep, Emma," Snow murmured, mostly to test her hypothesis.

"I'd love to but _someone_ is fidget-y."

An embarrassed flush colored Snow's cheeks even as she let out a soft breath of relief. Emma had only awakened when Snow had tried to settle down on the couch with her. "Sorry, I'll stop."

"S'okay," Emma whispered. Their feet were still touching, and Snow felt a sudden twitch as Emma's muscles relaxed, indicating that she was already sinking back into sleep.

With a soft chuckle and with the comfort of her family surrounding her, Snow closed her eyes and let herself drift off as well.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** Once again, we've come to an end. These characters are so much fun to play with, and the emotions latent in their story is a freakin' goldmine to explore as an author. But even though I do have fun giving the characters the family moments I wish we could see on the show, it's your responses that make this a blast for me. Thank you all for your lovely comments and words of encouragement. I swear, you are the best readers ever. :)

* * *

The rich, warm aroma of freshly brewed coffee gently drew Snow from her slumber. She lay curled on her side snuggled under the thick blanket as she slowly woke, allowing the coffee scent to comfort her and the sunlight streaming in through the window to warm her face. Quiet mornings like this, they were lovely and came too few and far between for her liking.

Inhaling deeply through her nose, Snow turned onto her back … and accidentally kicked another set of legs in the process.

Only then she did remember that she was sharing the couch with her baby girl. She froze in place, her eyes flying open. When the moment passed with no retaliation kick or any other indication that the accidental kick had disturbed Emma, Snow let out a breath of relief.

Taking care not to jostle Emma any further, Snow blearily pushed herself up to a sitting position and ran her fingers through her hair. Just as she noted that Henry was still curled up on the floor but her husband was nowhere to be found, a soft voice murmured, "Good morning."

She turned towards the voice and found her Charming standing at the kitchen island, surrounded by elements of the breakfast he intended to make for his family. "Good morning," she returned warmly, swinging her legs over the edge of the sofa. She stood, smiling to herself when a deeply asleep Emma turned over and sprawled out on her back, taking full advantage of the absence of another body on the couch with her.

As she padded over to the kitchen, she caught the wall clock out of the corner of her eye and had to do a double-take. "It's five of twelve?" a suddenly wide awake Snow hissed to her husband. "As in noon?!"

"It is indeed," Charming returned, a wry smile on his lips, "which is why I'm intending to make everyone a breakfast sandwich. Apparently this is the kind of thing that happens when the entire family goes to bed at four in the morning."

Apparently it was. Snow glanced over her shoulder into the living room. Henry was beginning to stir, at least, but Emma was still out like a light. Oh, this did not bode well for either of their sleep schedules. Letting out a quiet sigh, Snow turned back to face her husband. "How long have you been up?"

"About a half hour or so," he answered as he cracked eggs into a bowl. "I thought I'd take the rare opportunity to get a shower in before Emma took over the bathroom. You know, I'd kind of forgotten how good an actual hot shower feels."

Snow smirked at him; that wry smile of his was firmly back in place. "I hope you left her _some_ hot water."

"I did think about using it all to give her a taste of her own medicine," he said teasingly as he pulled the utensil drawer open and rummaged for the whisk, "but I quickly decided that her crankiness wasn't worth it."

At that, Snow chuckled. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Charming would never have used all the hot water on his baby girl, all joking evidence to the contrary. Emma had her father wrapped around her little finger, and he doted on her. _Oh, yes_, she thought, staring lovingly at her husband as a bittersweet feeling clamped down on her heart. Her baby would indeed have been a daddy's girl had they had the chance.

As Charming scrambled the eggs, Snow's gaze drifted up to the clock, where the minute hand was now dangerously close to the top of the hour. Sighing, she once again looked over her shoulder at her two sleeping family members. "We really should get them up," she murmured, mostly under her breath.

"They'll be up in a few minutes," Charming assured her. "If the coffee doesn't get them going, the bacon will."

Sure enough, the aroma and the crackling of the frying bacon did indeed rouse Henry. Rubbing his eyes, he shuffled to the kitchen and hopped up on a stool at the island. "G'morning," he mumbled.

"You mean good afternoon," Charming teased, nodding towards the clock.

Henry's bleary gaze followed Charming's movements only to become clear, fully focused, and full of surprise when he caught the time. "Whoa! I've never slept this late ever in my whole life!"

Snow muffled a snicker with a little cough. "I bet you've never stayed up until four in the morning, either, though."

Henry thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, that's true. Gramma?"

"Yes, Henry?"

"Can I have something to drink? I'm _really_ thirsty."

Chuckling, Snow stepped into the kitchen to pour her grandson a glass of milk. After she'd handed it over and he'd taken a large swig, Snow took stock of the breakfast preparations. Charming was cooking the eggs now and had put the bagels in the toaster, which meant their breakfast sandwiches would be ready in a few minutes.

It was officially time to get Emma out of bed. "Henry, will you please wake Emma?"

"She'll be grouchy," Henry said, a little frown of consternation on his lips.

"She'll be grouchier when she can't sleep tonight because she slept all day."

He didn't appear at all convinced but after a moment, a sparkle of mischief lit his eyes. His frown turned up into a sly smirk as he hopped off the stool. "Okay."

_Oh dear_, Snow thought, exchanging an amused smirk with her husband. Their poor daughter was going to have no idea what hit her.

The boy started with gentle pokes to her arm and tugs at her hair along with soft calls of her name. All of them were far too tender for the depth of her slumber so after a moment, he sat down on the edge of the sofa and bounced. The jostling forced her to turn onto her side with a grunt and pull the blanket up over her head. "Go 'way."

Henry paused to hold in a snicker, then pulled the blanket back down and hissed with false but convincing urgency in his voice, "Mom, you've got to get up! Don't you know what day it is?"

"Saturday," came her grumbled reply.

"No, it's Sunday. You slept straight through Saturday."

It was all Snow could do not to laugh when a suddenly awake Emma bolted upright, frantic eyes darting wildly around the room. "What?! How the hell did I … what?!"

Henry, on the other hand, couldn't hold in his laughter. "I'm just kidding," he giggled. "It's really Saturday."

She flopped back down on the pillow, groaning. "That's not funny, kid."

"Come on, it's a little funny."

Her annoyed glare made it clear that she did not agree. Snow and Charming, however, did. Emma pushed herself off the couch with a sigh and padded into the kitchen to join her parents, Henry following along at her heels. "_This_ one," she said, jerking a thumb in her son's direction, "is not allowed to wake me up anymore. I just about had a freakin' heart attack."

When it became clear to her that both of her parents were stifling giggles, Emma rolled her eyes and plopped down on a stool. Ever the master subject-changer, she said, "I smell bacon."

"You do indeed," Charming said, smiling at his daughter. "In honor of our sleeping until lunchtime, everyone gets a breakfast sandwich today. I'm assuming bacon, egg, and cheese is all right with you."

"You assume correctly," Emma replied, giving her father a little smile. Then his words registered and her gaze shifted to the clock. Her eyes widened in shock, and Snow could only imagine the string of surprised curses running through her baby girl's head.

As Charming put their sandwiches together and plated them up, he asked, "Did everyone have fun last night?"

"Of course," Snow replied, which was the absolute truth. Spending time with her family was always fun, and the previous night had been full of games and movies and togetherness. Add all that in with sharing a natural wonder with each other and well, it had been more fun and more amazing than she could have ever hoped it would be.

"Totally!" That was from Henry. "We stayed up super-late and ate all kinds of junk food and played games and saw so many shooting stars I lost count. It was awesome!"

And Emma, being Emma, had to chime in with, "Yeah, I guess." She gave a shrug that was supposed to come across as halfhearted, but the little smile on her lips betrayed her.

Snow and Charming exchanged a smirk. Oh, their daughter had had fun, all right, far more than she'd expected, but far be it for her to admit that out loud. They didn't need to hear the words to know, though. They knew because they knew her. They knew how to read past her walls and just see Emma, their baby girl.

That didn't mean, though, that their baby girl couldn't surprise them. "This time, I do have to agree with the kid," she added, looking up at both of them with a somewhat shy expression. "Last night? Was awesome."

A touched Snow couldn't help herself. She rounded the island and cupped her daughter's cheeks in the palms of her hands. "It was wonderful, wasn't it?" she asked, her thumbs running along Emma's cheeks.

Emma's eyes had begun to glisten as she accepted the affection but the smile remained on her lips. "Yeah, I guess this family stuff is kind of neat."

This time, it was Henry who made the joke. "So … we can do this all over again next weekend, right?"

Everyone laughed. Snow released her hold on her daughter's face as Emma turned to roll her eyes at her son. "Not on your life, kid. Staying up till four a.m. is not going to be a thing that happens regularly."

"Aw, man," he sighed, though it was clear that he was teasing. He grinned a thank you at Charming when he slid his breakfast plate to him and then asked, "So, what are we going to do after we eat?"

Before Snow even had time to think of an activity, Emma said, "We still have to watch the third _Back to the Future_, don't we?"

Snow's touched and surprised gaze met Charming's equally touched and surprised one. Emma, of all people, was willingly extending family time?

"Oh, yeah!" Henry exclaimed. "And maybe you can make more kettle corn for us!"

"Not kettle corn this time," Emma argued with a shake of her head. "Ranch popcorn."

The two of them then got into a playful debate over whether ranch popcorn or kettle corn was better, but Snow heard none of it. All she could focus on was her baby, her little girl. Her Emma, who was finally coming around, settling in, and maybe – just maybe – allowing them to be her family.

When Snow sidled closer to her Charming, he wrapped his arm her shoulders, pressed a kiss to her temple, and whispered, "She's coming home."

A smile tugged at Snow's lips as she nestled her head on her husband's shoulder. Yes, Emma was indeed on her journey home, and Snow knew none of them would stop guiding her until she found her way.


End file.
